Ciel by gon architects

A Penthouse Reborn as a Sky-Lit Domestic Landscape in Madrid

In the heart of Madrid’s Justicia neighborhood, directly between Gran Vía and Chueca, gon architects have transformed a once-dark penthouse into CIEL—a luminous, sky-oriented domestic landscape shaped under an expansive 200 m² roof. Designed for a French family who, after years of relocating across continents, chose Madrid as their permanent home, the project reinterprets an early-20th-century attic apartment as a flexible, warm, and fluid space framed by the iconic Velázquez skies.

Despite its top-floor location, the dwelling originally lacked meaningful connection to the city or its skyline. Its defining feature was an enormous undulating roof composed of seven slopes, supported by a web of aging wooden beams and concealed behind a low false ceiling. What might have been a limitation became the project's conceptual engine: the house would be redesigned through the roof.

Designing From the Roof Down: Light, Air, and Structure

The architects approached the renovation by uncovering, reinforcing, and celebrating the roof’s structural and spatial potential. Metal reinforcements stabilize the original wooden framework, while a strategic constellation of new skylights and perforations introduces natural light, air circulation, and shifting shadows into every part of the home.

The result is a domestic topography defined by:

Variable ceiling heights
Exposed wooden beams
Diagonal light projections and sky views
Spaces that expand and contract beneath the roof’s geometry

These interventions replace the formerly compartmentalized plan with a continuous interior that feels open, breathable, and responsive to time.

A Fluid Interior: Continuous Space With Gradual Thresholds

CIEL rejects rigid boundaries between public and private, instead offering a flowing spatial sequence where living, dining, working, and resting coexist. Boundaries are suggested not by walls, but by:

Flooring transitions between wood and ceramic
Subtle shifts in ceiling height
Soft gradations in natural light

The architects designed the apartment as an environment supporting multiple simultaneous activities—a necessity for a family of five accustomed to dynamic lifestyles and varied cultural influences.

Shelving systems, long communal tables, reading zones, and intimate bedroom niches contribute to a domestic setting that is adaptable, layered, and highly lived-in.

A Roof That Becomes a Landscape

At the farthest end of the 21-meter-long home lies a 15 m² terrace, the apartment’s most extroverted moment. Together with the skylights, it floods the interior with daylight and becomes a seasonal gathering place—complete with a small jacuzzi for winter and summer use.

Inside, the ceiling’s sloping planes and exposed beams create the sensation of inhabiting a crafted interior terrain. The roof is not merely a shelter but a defining architectural volume, shaping the experience of every room.

Objects, Memory, and a Life Lived Across Continents

The furnishings echo the family's long nomadic history—an assemblage of pieces acquired in Toulouse, Réunion Island, Washington, London, and now Madrid. Nineteenth-century chairs mix with mid-century classics and IKEA essentials, forming a lived-in, eclectic environment that resists stylistic rigidity.

The apartment thus becomes a postcard of accumulated memories, a home capable of growing with its inhabitants whether they stay “a few years or a lifetime.”

A House That Interacts With the Sky, Not the City

CIEL is a renovation shaped by a unique urban condition: a top-floor apartment that engages less with Madrid’s streets and more with its skies. The architects embrace this by designing a home that responds to light, air, shadows, and atmospheric change, making the daily passage of time an active protagonist.

It is, in essence, a technologically crafted roof under which life unfolds, offering shelter, openness, and an intimate connection to the cobalt blues of Madrid's celestial canopy.