Casa Nolla is a home with a unique identity, which preserves and highlights the past in dialogue with the contemporary world.
2023
CASA NOLLA is a design home, located in the heart of Valencia, in the Ensanche neighborhood. The building where it is located is protected and cataloged for its architectural and ornamental interest in the Casticist or Neobaroque style built in the 1930s.
The goal of this project was to adapt the new needs in terms of rooms, preserving the original decorative elements of the property and providing a chromatic simplicity that gave coherence to the entire project.
Nolla floors are a type of flooring based on small, high-performance ceramic pieces that were produced in Spain. Miquel Nolla introduced this English ceramic product in Spain in the mid-19th century, which consists of small geometric stoneware tiles, intended to create complex mosaic-like compositions.
Unlike other types of mosaics, Nolla mosaic uses pieces that do not require cuts for placement, using the simplest geometric shapes. In this home, there is a different drawing in each room, but the colors used are repeated.
Due to its great aesthetic presence in the interior, it has been decided to intervene with new pieces of carpentry and walls that are very simple in color and shape, so that they do not compete with the mosaic, which is the main protagonist.
The richness of moldings and textures on the original ceilings make Casa Nolla’s personality unique, with a sophisticated and clean ornamental complexity.
The spaces that were previously compartmentalized disappear to create spacious rooms and areas of the house, where visually the spaces are connected through curves and arches.
These arches are inspired by the moldings and tangents of the building’s original carpentry.
The openings that open in the facades also acquire a curved format, to integrate into the language of the rest of the project.
The common typology of these Ensanche homes is to locate the night area (rooms) on the street side, to open the day area to the inner courtyard of the block, which is much quieter and brighter. In the new distribution, this typology is modified, to guarantee life focused on the outside.
The connection between the day area and the night area is marked by a large 3-meter-high door, made of iron and glass, designed with a contemporary language.
The color range is simple and warm, while the play of moldings and mosaics adds a degree of complexity to the interior atmosphere. The composition of forms is a dialogue of contrasts.
