Project name: CHANCHS
Interior design: DG Estudio
Design Team: Isabel Roger, Daniel González
Location: Valencia
Photo: Mariela Apollonio
Area: …
Year: 2024
Project description from design firms DG Estudio
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
William Faulkner
CHANCHS or how to go from nomadic to sedentary and not die trying, the new project of DG Estudio in the Arrancapins neighbourhood of Valencia.
ABSTRACT
A young family decides to choose the Arrancapins neighbourhood to put down roots and work hand in hand with DG Estudio to design their home. Lots of colour and boldness for an integral reform where a sense of humour and joy invade every corner of the house from floor to ceiling.
THE PROJECT
Before 2020, being a “digital nomad” was more than a collective aspiration. Where freedom of work mixes with leisure. Working no longer had to be the grey reality which Jacques Tati mocks so much in Playtime. Having your office in an eternal summer: the dream of many, the envy of many others. But there comes a time in life when, amidst so many sunsets in exotic countries, one looks to the horizon and thinks about which amongst them is home. This project speaks of this process, of horizons, roots and emotional landscapes.
The inhabitants of Chanchs are a family that have a personal relationship with colour and design. They have a large collection of treasured objects and their idea of a home revolves around communal spaces and a table where you can share a good specialty coffee at the end of the day.
The horizon, on the other hand, is a somewhat unique spatial concept. Virtually non-existent, abstract, but uniting two spaces as separate as the sky and the sea in a single landscape. No two are alike, just as every moment in life is special. This project revolves around this idea of a virtual horizon running through the entire house uniting two completely separate spaces: the structure of the apartment with its original language, and the new layout with a contemporary and totally distinct language. Just as the horizon separates the sky blue from the ocean blue, in the project it separates the petrol blue of the original moldings from the Klein blue of the new furniture. But horizons not only separate the colours of the sky and the sea, they also allow a place of rest for the sun, the clouds or a distant island. For this reason, the horizon of the project has a thickness allowing the placement of different objects that hold special meaning for the family and that form a part of their history.
The entryway leads directly into the heart of the house, the meeting point between the kitchen, dining room, living room and office. Everything in an open space that revolves around a central cupboard in an accentuated Klein blue on which rest the original mouldings of the house.
The hallway that distributes the more private areas of the home also becomes a storage space thanks to the large cupboard that runs along the length of the dividing wall in a pristine white colour.
The two bathrooms, one in yellow and the other in green, complete the triad of saturated colours that cover the house below the horizon line.
Two children’s bedrooms and the master bedroom conclude the functional programme with a relaxed and timeless atmosphere where the combination of original ceiling mouldings above the horizon line stand out against the modern lines of the new layout.
The solid colour palette is complemented by the textures of natural materials with oak flooring and Macael marble in white tones and bluish veins for the kitchen worktop.
A project which contains the experiences and objects of a life well lived, amassed during more than 10 years around the world, and that transforms the horizon of those relished sunsets into a basis to create new ones from their home.
