LABLANCA Threads a Curved Service Spine Through a 1960s Flat in Badalona's Old Town

Narrow flats in old Mediterranean town centres usually come with the same problem: a long, deep plan squeezed between party walls, daylight only at the ends, and a corridor that eats the middle. In Riera, the Barcelona-area studio LABLANCA takes on exactly that condition in a 1960s building in Badalona's casco antiguo, set along the former course of the Riera de Matamoros, a seasonal stream bed that the city long ago paved over. A courtyard also cuts into the depth of the plan, which makes the plot harder to work with.

What interests us is the refusal to fight the plot. The architects lay a single service and storage core along the full length of the flat. Its thickness varies as it runs, so it can hold a kitchen in one place, wardrobes in another and a bathroom further along. Circulation, storage and plumbing all go into one continuous piece of joinery. Because that piece is rounded, painted and lined in yellow, it also becomes the main architectural event of the flat. Most renovations of this size spread their effort across every room. This one puts nearly all of it into one element.

The Spine Starts in the Kitchen

The kitchen is where you first understand the core as an object rather than a wall. The white run ends in a full radius instead of a hard corner, so the counter reads less like fitted cabinetry and more like a continuous mass that has been eroded at the edge. A pale yellow recess and an overhead cabinet in the same colour mark where the mass has been hollowed out for use.

The yellow countertop takes the sink and induction hob without fuss, and the teak sideboard just beyond keeps the room from becoming a showroom. The curve does practical work in a narrow flat. It softens the turn where people pass the cooking zone, and it lets light from the side slide along the surface rather than stopping at an edge.

Yellow as a Lining, Not a Feature Wall

The colour strategy is disciplined. Yellow never covers a whole wall. It lines the insides of niches, shelves and cupboards, as if the core were white outside and painted inside. Next to the green quilted sofa and the teak furniture, the niche works as a backdrop for a reading lamp and a book rather than as decoration.

Plywood edging frames each opening, so the ply shows its layers right at the point where white turns into yellow. You see the build-up of the material at every threshold, which is a more honest move than hiding the substrate under paint.

Rounded Corners and Exposed Plywood Edges

Up close, the joinery holds up. A rounded plywood edge meets curved yellow doors with a clean, even radius, and circular finger pulls replace handles on the white fronts, keeping the surface smooth. These are cheap moves in material terms but expensive in attention, and they are why the core feels made rather than ordered from a catalogue.

The same geometry continues into the wet areas. Square cream tiles meet a round mirror, and a curved shadow falls across the wall. The circle and the square repeat throughout the flat, at the scale of a door pull and at the scale of a wall.

Thresholds Carved into the Core

Where the core meets the private rooms, LABLANCA cuts arches and curved soffits into it rather than simply punching doors through a partition. A tall white pivot door sits inside a rounded opening, and slim vertical handles mounted on the wall stand in for conventional door furniture. The doorway reads as a pocket in the mass, which helps the core stay legible as one continuous element.

The hallway shows the payoff. Flush white wardrobe doors line one side, a rounded corner eases the turn, and a bright window closes the view at the far end. A corridor that would normally be dead space now does the storage work, and its length becomes a deliberate approach toward the light.

A Bathroom Dipped in Ochre

The bathroom is where the yellow lining finally takes over a whole room, and it works because the space is small and enclosed. Square yellow tiles, a yellow plywood vanity and a white basin make a tight composition, with the round mirror bringing back the circle from elsewhere in the flat. Through the half-open door, the mirror catches the window and pulls daylight deeper into the core.

The shower alcove changes to curved ochre plaster above small square tiles, with a round rain head overhead and a white grab bar. That last detail matters: accessibility hardware sits comfortably in the palette instead of being added later as an apology.

Plans and Drawings

The plan confirms the logic you sense on site. Day spaces and night spaces sit clearly apart, a split the architects tie to solar orientation, and the core runs between them like a thickened spine. The axonometric isolates the built-in volume as an L-shaped object with rounded corners, drawn against the dotted footprint of the existing flat. It is the clearest single image of the project: one piece of furniture-scale architecture organising an entire home.

Why This Project Matters

Southern European cities are full of postwar flats like this one: deep, narrow, wedged between party walls and long overdue for renovation. Riera offers a repeatable method. Accept the linear plot, put services and storage into one carefully designed element, and let that element handle circulation and character as well. The rest of the flat can then stay calm and open, and the budget goes where it has the most effect.

It also shows that a small domestic project can have a clear architectural idea without being precious about it. The curves, the yellow linings and the exposed ply edges are not styling added at the end; they come straight from treating the core as a single object. We would like to see more renovations at this scale argued as clearly as this one.

Riera Renovation by LABLANCA. Location: Badalona, Spain. Year: 2026. Photography: Simone Marcolin.

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