Ceramic Tiles, Izakaya Bars & Onsen Energy: Valencia Workspace Transformed Through the Lens of Tokyo.

Valencia’s Ruzafa neighbourhood has long attracted creative studios drawn to its walkable streets, mixed-use blocks and neighbourhood energy. At number 21 Sornells Street—a pedestrian route threading between the Ruzafa Market and the surrounding residential fabric—architecture and interior design practice Paloma Bau and creative studio T.O.T, led by designer Ausiàs Pérez, have jointly transformed a former commercial unit into Sornells 21: a 170sqm shared workspace conceived for their respective teams and a wider community of creative professionals.

The collaboration developed organically. Pérez’s return to Valencia coincides with Paloma Bau’s search for a new studio, and the resulting space is less a strategic partnership than a genuine experiment in creative cohabitation. T.O.T led the conceptual development; Paloma Bau handled its architectural materialisation. The division is telling: T.O.T’s speculative, brand-culture sensibility meeting Paloma Bau’s precision in translating ideas into geometry, matter and detail.

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The driving concept is a reinterpretation—not a literal recreation—of three everyday urban experiences from Tokyo: the ceramic-tiled street, the izakaya bar, and the onsen. The arrival sequence sets the tone immediately. White 10×10 ceramic tiles wrap the entrance threshold in a logic borrowed directly from Tokyo’s urban façades, while a large ceiling mirror doubles the space and creates a disorienting in-between sensation—are you inside or still on the street? A solid white concrete bench grounds the moment and introduces one of the project’s recurring materials.

Beyond that threshold, the U-shaped plan organises around a 7.2-metre cantilevered table in black San Vicente stone with a sculptural white block leg — a statement piece that can seat nearly twenty people and pivot between coworking table, dining surface, presentation venue or tasting bar. Running above it, a bespoke longitudinal luminaire inspired by Noren—the textile curtains marking the thresholds of Japanese taverns—casts a warm horizontal rhythm across the space.

The izakaya logic is extended with characteristic wit: the kitchen sits outside the bar, inverting convention. A mirror placed opposite reflects the cook back into the space, symbolically resolving the contradiction. It’s the kind of quiet perceptual game that runs throughout the project—subtle inversions that generate unexpected yet coherent spatial moments.

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The onsen-inspired meeting room, accessed via a concealed stair within the kitchen panelling, is the project’s most theatrical move. Pink tile, Klein blue metalwork, shower-head luminaires and a painted neon sky—standing in for the customary Mount Fuji—make it feel otherworldly against the studio’s prevailing restraint. The adjacent bathrooms in intense red push the contrast further still.

Materially, light microcement flooring unifies the entire sequence; a sprayed cellulose ceiling handles acoustics while leaving services and curtain rails exposed. All bespoke furniture was manufactured by the Valencian firm Lebrel Furniture, with technical lighting by Arkoslight and decorative rice-paper lamps supplying warmth. The result is a space that can flex from studio to exhibition, from meeting to dinner, without a wall being moved.

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[Images courtesy of Paloma Bau Studio. Photography by David Zarzoso.]