The unique creativity of Barcelona as a city is reflected in Antares Barcelona’s art-inspired interior design

One of Barcelona’s main attractions is its beautiful Art Nouveau buildings. Better known by locals as Modernista, this style is most prevalent in Barcelona’s Eixample district, which has one of the highest concentrations of such architecture in Europe. Unique examples include Gaudi’s masterpieces, Casa Milà (La Pedrera) and La Casa Batlló. This extraordinary architecture contributes to the city’s unrivalled character and creativity, which is echoed in the innovative architectural style of Antares Barcelona.

Antares Barcelona’s architect Odile Decq collaborated with international interior design firm, Hirsch Bedner Associates to channel the city’s vibrancy into the looks of three stunning 10th-floor show apartments. The individual interior schemes of the three-bedroom units each pays homage to one of Spain’s best-known artists, two of them from Catalonia, taking inspiration from the dominant colour palettes of their work.

The Miró Apartment

The most famous of the featured artists is Joan Miró, best known for his bright, colourful, almost childlike paintings. Regarded as a Surrealist, Miro favours dreamlike scenes and geometric shapes that pop with vivid yellows, reds and blues, often with black borders and use of white space.

Channelling this playful ethos, the Miro show apartment features tones of citrus yellow offset by black in the lounge chairs and dining furniture. Each of the three bedrooms demonstrates individual use of a main colour associated with Miro with one furnished in red and black, another predominantly in yellow and black, and the third suite in whites and blues.

Odile Decq’s signature high-gloss white surfaces and cabinetry are enhanced by splashes of colour in the furnishings, including multi-coloured ceramics in quirky and geometric-shapes, occasional tables, and soft furnishings. Abstract prints by Miro line the walls, and rugs inspired by his designs cover the floors. The dark wood of the terracing is a natural backdrop for seating in white and a dark orange-red that gives continuity to the exterior space.

The Tàpies Apartment

Antoni Tàpies has been hugely influential in Catalan art. Considered a master of the style known as Art Informel, Tàpies worked as a lithographer, painter and sculptor. His focus was on the nature of materials used to create art and are a blend of mixed media, such as marble dust, chalk, sand and found objects like textiles or wood. Surfaces are often distressed by scratching or graffiti, and often bear the artist’s hallmark ‘cross’ motif.

Tàpies’ colour palette included naturally occurring tones, the reds of rust and wine, blacks and browns of earth, golds of sand and greys of stone and marble. The design team incorporated these rich, moody tones into an elegant colour scheme. A focal point has been created in the lounge with a full-size canvas hanging of a Tàpies artwork. Furnishings in sand-gold, charcoal-grey, wine-red and earth-brown complement pieces accented in natural wood and metal, while the soft grey-green of the dining chairs and bold gold-and-grey-veined stoneware table are an elemental feature of the kitchen-dining space. The colour schemes are repeated across the three bedrooms, with texture added via leather, stone and solid wood in natural tones. Accessories and light fittings are statement pieces in tactile earthenware, wood and metal.

The Chillida Apartment

One of Spain’s most important sculptors, Eduardo Chillida was fascinated by the relationship between matter and space. His Barcelona sculptures include Topos V, located at the city’s Plaça del Rei, and the masterwork Praise of Water, an enormous sculpture in concrete that hangs permanently over a lake in the city’s Parc de la Creueta del Coll. Form and texture are important elements in Chillida’s works which were predominantly created in concrete, stone, iron and steel.

The design team have taken inspiration from Chillida’s works in the use of textured materials and an industrial-based colour scheme with tones of rust, pale stone and mid-greys, offset with grey-veined marble, rugs and cushions in alabaster-cream and granite-grey, earthenware crockery, and textured woven seating. Bedrooms also showcase a palette of muted browns and reds, taupes and greys reminiscent of the artist’s use of natural stone and concrete. Furniture is selected for its form, such as a curved wood-and-leather chair in one room, dark marble shelving and the moulded form of exterior seating.

Visit the Antares Barcelona website or visit the showcase below.

Antares Barcelona