estudio Hass Gives a 75 m² Madrid Loft Order by Turning Its Idle Mezzanine into a Private Suite

Double-height lofts sell on promise. The ceiling soars, the light pours in, and the listing photos look generous. Living in one is another matter: volume without structure tends to produce rooms that are hard to furnish, hard to heat and hard to inhabit. That was the condition estudio Hass, led by Elena Moreno and Jorge Prieto, inherited in Madrid. The ground floor was split by a poorly placed bathroom, and the upper level was a mezzanine void with no assigned purpose.

The renovation, completed in 2026 across 75 m², is a lesson in editing rather than adding. The architects did not chase spectacle. They put things in their places: the wet rooms, the stair, the storage, the kitchen. They gave each element a material and a color that you can read from across the room. The result is a small apartment that finally behaves like a home, and that has a personality you would not mistake for a developer's fit-out.

A Kitchen That Works Like Furniture

The kitchen runs along a single wall, which is the most efficient choice you can make in a footprint this tight. What lifts it above the default is the mix: a stainless steel counter and sink paired with a stone backsplash, blue wall cabinets, and a cylindrical hood that reads more like a column than an appliance. The steel brings a quiet professional edge, and the blue keeps it from feeling clinical.

The faceted island table is the clever piece. It serves as prep surface, dining table and social anchor, so the kitchen does not need a separate eating area. A white cylindrical pendant hangs in front of the white concrete stair and ties the two together visually. Archello lists Flos among the project's lighting suppliers, and the fixtures here do real spatial work: they mark zones in a room that has no partitions.

Keeping the Double Height, Taming It

Many renovations of this type give up and fill the void with a second floor. estudio Hass kept it, which is the right call, and made it livable with a few deliberate moves. Floor-to-ceiling sheer curtains soften the daylight across the full height of the glazing, so the tall wall glows instead of glaring. Slim timber shelves hung from the ceiling give the living wall a human scale without blocking the view upward.

Seen from the sofa, the section does the talking. The kitchen sits below, a round mirror punctuates the wall, and the mezzanine edge is finished with a looped white balustrade that feels closer to a drawn line than a safety rail. The olive sofa and ottoman stay low, which lets the vertical space read as a feature and not as leftover air.

Storage and Work Built into the Structure

The space under a stair is usually wasted or stuffed with a cupboard. Here it becomes a workspace behind folding white doors, with oak shelving and room for a task chair. Close the doors and the office disappears, which matters when you work from home in 75 m² and want your evenings back.

Upstairs, a built-in white cabinet with ribbed side panels hides terracotta-toned shelves and drawers, beneath a ceiling softened with draped fabric. This is where the project's tone comes through: practical joinery with a sense of humor, right down to the bird-shaped floor mat. Storage is treated as part of the architecture, not something bought afterward.

A Powder Room Moved and Remade

The original bathroom was the main reason the ground floor felt broken. The new plan reduces it to a compact toilet, set behind a blue timber door and a glass block wall. The glass block is a smart choice. It lets borrowed light into the small room while keeping privacy, and it gives the main space a translucent surface instead of a blank partition.

Inside, the details carry the room: a faceted mirror that echoes the geometry of the kitchen island, a floating wood shelf, and a white globe wall lamp. It is a small space that gets the same design attention as the living area, which is often where good residential work shows itself.

The Mezzanine Becomes a Private Suite

The upper floor, previously a void with no role, now holds the private life of the apartment: a bedroom, a full bathroom, a dressing area and a small sitting zone. A round opening frames the bedroom and recalls the round mirror downstairs. That kind of repeated motif is how a small project builds coherence without imposing one material everywhere.

The bathroom is the richest room in the apartment. A green marble vanity sits against brushed steel cabinet doors under an angular mirror, flanked by tube wall lights. The shower alcove is lined in glazed terracotta tile, with a rain head and a strip of warm light above the glass. Terracotta returns in the bedroom headboard, so the private floor has its own warmer palette, set apart from the cooler steel and blue below.

Plans and Drawings

The two plans show how simple the final strategy is. On the ground floor, the kitchen holds one wall, the island sits in the middle, the sofa area claims the light, and the toilet and stair are pushed to the edges. Upstairs, the bedroom, bathroom and dressing room line up off the stair landing, and a sitting area overlooks the double-height space. Every square meter has a job, and the circulation stays short.

Why This Project Matters

Cities like Madrid are full of lofts and conversions that look impressive empty and frustrate the people who live in them. The H001CH-Hass loft shows that the fix is not always more square meters or a structural overhaul. It is a clear plan: put the wet rooms where they disturb the least, give the idle level a purpose, and let the stair and storage carry several functions at once.

What we value most is the restraint in the palette. Stainless steel, blue timber, terracotta, green marble and glass block could easily clash. Here each one is assigned to a zone and repeated with intent, so the apartment reads as a single idea. For anyone renovating a small, awkward interior, this is a useful reference in how to bring order to a space while keeping it fun to live in.

H001CH-Hass loft by estudio Hass (Elena Moreno and Jorge Prieto), Madrid, Spain. Area: 75 m². Completed: 2026. Photography by Asier Rua.

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