The Sailor's House

Historic home renovation meets bold contemporary interior design in this landmark Catalan residential project.

There is a particular anxiety that attaches itself to old houses — the fear that to touch them is to diminish them, that modernisation and heritage exist in permanent opposition. Manuel Cuyas and his wife Nuria lived with that tension for some time before handing the keys to their nineteenth-century family home in Mataró to Raúl Sánchez Architects. The practice's answer, arrived at over a renovation focused on three key spaces, is one of the more convincing arguments in recent Spanish residential architecture for what heritage design can look like when it refuses to become a museum.

The house has been in the Cuyas family since 1865, when sailor Antoni Cuyas returned from South America and merged two dwellings into one. Five generations of accumulated life followed. When Raúl Sánchez Architects came to the project, the brief was precise: restore the home's architectural grandeur without freezing it. The entrance hall, dining room, and living area were the focus — spaces where the collision between historical significance and modern living was most acute.

In the living area, the practice introduced a bespoke stainless steel platform integrating dual home office desks, a built-in sofa, and natural stone storage — a contemporary workspace solution that sits, improbably and elegantly, against original patterned terracotta floors and period wallpaper treated with protective resin. White micromortar replaced outdated perimeter tiling, sharpening the contrast between old and new. A mirrored television cabinet with a yellow-painted interior adds a further note of controlled surprise.

The rarest achievement in heritage design is a home that carries its history forward — without ever being asked to stand still.

The dining room received dark oak hardwood flooring laid in dialogue with original decorative wainscotting, stainless steel bookshelves, and a glossy red Carlo Scarpa Orseolo table — collectible Italian design furniture introduced into a nineteenth-century Catalan interior with complete assurance. In the entrance hall, a bold vermillion colour-blocking treatment announces itself without apology, while a glass case housing one of Antoni Cuyas' original swords quietly insists on the weight of what came before.

The result is a home that has been allowed to grow — carrying its history forward with confidence rather than reverence.

Key takeaways

• Raúl Sánchez Architects approached the Cuyas family home as a living space rather than a heritage object, introducing bold contemporary interventions — stainless steel platforms, vermillion colour-blocking, a Carlo Scarpa table — in direct dialogue with original terracotta floors, period ceilings, and decorative wainscotting.
• The renovation resolved a modern live-work brief through a bespoke built-in stainless steel structure housing dual home office desks and a sofa, proving that contemporary workspace design can integrate seamlessly into period interiors.
• By preserving original architectural elements selectively and contrasting them with precisely chosen new materials, the practice achieved the rarest balance in heritage renovation: a home that carries its history forward rather than being anchored to it.