"We Wanted It to Feel a Little Provocative" — Inside a Madrid Renovation Where Terracotta, Steel, and Latex Combine to Tongue-in-Cheek Effect

A butter yellow-tinted kitchen with a black wood kitchen island topped by a ceramic vase, matte chrome kitchen countertops, white curtains to conceal shelving, and a round, white lighting bulb.

When Archive For Space co-founders Arabella Maza and Stephen Maginn took on the renovation of an apartment in Madrid, they confronted a remarkable challenge: transforming a space composed of small, disconnected rooms and little natural light into a sequential configuration that responded to the owners' fluid way of living.

The 80-square-meter property was located within a 1900s building and, in the tradition of much of the Spanish capital's 20th-century residential architecture, its layout was narrow and heavily compartmentalized, reflecting an approach of segmentalized domesticity.