Interior Designer’s 1930s Madrid Villa Rebuilt as an Exquisite Corpse.

Plutarco have never been a studio to whisper. Ana Arana and Enrique Ventosa have spent a decade building a body of work defined by saturated colour, unexpected materials and a refusal to repeat themselves—and we’ve published enough of it over the years to know that the results are anything but predictable. Predictably visually arresting, sure. Predictable—never!

Villa 2030 is Ventosa’s own home in Madrid’s Embajadores, and it arrives as a companion piece to Ana Arana’s 1934 villa, which we published earlier this year. Two co-founders, two houses, one shared appetite for risk.

The apartment occupies a 1990s building with a precast concrete façade—225m² per level, an almost perfectly rectangular plan, ribbon windows on two sides and a concrete pillar structure that hands the designers an unusual amount of freedom. Plutarco took it as an invitation. The existing layout was stripped back to nothing, and a single, decisive gesture reorganises everything: a large T-shaped wall of glass blocks that carves the plan into rooms.

Interior Designer Turns a Neglected 1934 Madrid Villa Into a Design Manifesto.

When Plutarco co-founder set about renovating her own 1934 Madrid villa, the result was always going to be personal.

The conceptual premise is equally direct. Plutarco looked to the grand villas of the 1930s and built what they describe as a themed museum, arguing that design from a century ago still holds. Maison de Verre, Villa Cavrois, Villa Necchi, Villa E-1027, Maison La Roche—all named outright rather than buried. “We’re not afraid to highlight the project’s clear references,” the studio says. “Building a sort of Exquisite Corpse or Frankenstein out of projects we admire was our starting point.”

The entry sets the terms: a 1900s-style greenhouse thick with exotic plants, where outdoor elements—lighting, terrazzo, a linear drain—meet a levitating timber coat closet that reads as a totem and keeps clear of the irrigation water. Deep aubergine, sky blue and vanilla nod to Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, grounded by black-and-white terrazzo.

Beyond a pivoting door with life-size hand-shaped handles, the main space runs to roughly 100m². A circular glass block volume anchors it, linoleum flooring and warm-cool colour contrasts point squarely at Pierre Chareau, and painted concrete pillars hold their own against XL wall textures. Rugs delineate the scenes—including one in a deep purple that has no business working as well as it does—while Plutarco’s own STV sofa and México chest sit alongside the Ekstrem chair, Zanotta’s Quaderna table and Faye Toogood’s Puffy armchair.

Dining happens twice. A brick-red table under Ingo Maurer’s Zettel’z lamp handles the everyday, backed by a food-themed art wall. Behind it, a sapele podium conceals a Donald Judd-inspired table for sixteen, with a perimeter curtain to shut out visual clutter entirely. The kitchen—checkerboard floor via Robert Mallet-Stevens, butter-yellow joinery, Macael marble, stainless steel and outlets dangling from corrugated cable—was designed as the centrepiece of every party.

Then the ceilings, which is where this house shows its hand. In the kitchen, a painted halo pays homage to Alvar Aalto’s wall sconces at Paimio. In the main bedroom, an ultra-matte maroon-black ceiling presses down on a silver curtain wall and a black tubular canopy bed, in a room that reworks Adolf Loos’s design for Lina Loos in anything but white.

“More is more,” Plutarco note, discussing the layered light filtering. Perhaps. But what makes Villa 2030 land is how measured it all feels beneath the exuberance—every colour, reference and texture calibrated rather than simply piled on.

Courage, colour and control, held in equilibrium. Extreme love!

David Pastor Liberates a Madrid Home From Nostalgia With Colour and Light.

When David Pastor first encountered this home, its modest architecture and mature garden stirred deep nostalgia. But inside, divided spaces and disappointing darkness told a different story.

[Images courtesy of Plutarco. Photography by Germán Saiz.]