La casa che amo
Biennale Architettura 2025 Gens
Living as an Experience between the collective and the domestic
by Carmelo Zappulla
Introduction
To live is to inhabit stories. Some of these unfold in the intimacy of our own homes, others take place in the unpredictable rhythm of the city, and many of these project one into the other, inviting us to revisit the way in which we experience spaces. I have always been fascinated by how these two forms of living, the more private or domestic and the collective and shared ones, might mirror each other. From a personal perspective, as an Italian living in Barcelona, and having lived in more than 20 houses, the concept of home, feels more distributed, or dilated. Although for some this might read as a loss of roots, for me, this demonstrates a certain capacity to adapt, or find comfort, in a multiplicity of spaces. This phenomenon can arise from an invitation on behalf of the space itself, summoning us not just to inhabit it superficially, but to live it in a diversity of forms. Ultimately, I believe this transition within the possibilities of space make our experiences more memorable. And it is here where I would like to focus, in the space where living today is not only about being present in spaces, following their traditional hierarchies, but also about inhabiting them, and how, by imbibing a diversity of values into spaces, we might experience them more meaningfully, both as individuals, and as a collective.
At External Reference, we approach each project as its own story. A story that often bridges realities and creates new imaginaries. A home can carry the openness of an urban square; just like a store can hold the intimacy of a domestic space. What is key here is how the architecture invites us to experience, to feel part of something larger than ourselves. In that sense, every project becomes a fragment of the city, every fragment of the city becomes a place to live, and every place gives life back to the city. Through the exploration of work developed by External Reference, this text dives into living as an experience enhanced through an architecture that blurs the line between home and city, the domestic and the collective, the individual and the shared.
The City as a Collective Body:
The true architecture of a city is not only made of the physical elements, but also the relationships they cultivate. The exchanges between people, spaces, and sensations are also part of what builds a city. When we design a project, it lives inside a city, but the city too, can come to life through the project’s spaces. By design we extend the urban experience rather than withdraw from it. The project is penetrated by all that is urban, and multiplies it through its spaces, allowing for both individual moments and shared experiences. The WOW Concept Store in Madrid is a perfect example of this, imagined not as a commercial interior but as a piece of the city that has folded into a building. Located inside a protected building, the former Hotel Roma, dating back to 1915, the design of the interior space, generates a dialogue between an extremely contemporary and digitally enhanced layer and its important historical and urban context. Instead of corridors and rooms, we created streets, plazas, and landmarks. Each floor has its own rhythm and atmosphere, inviting visitors to wander as they would through a neighbourhood. Materials, light, and technology are choreographed to create movement and curiosity, those same dynamics that often make urban life vibrant. Inside, we invite people to not behave as consumers but rather as explorers. This way, the WOW concept store tells a story about the city itself, its layers, contrasts, and constant movement. The project translates the urban experience into an interior landscape that mirrors how people explore and connect with a city. Instead of a single identity, the store embraces multiplicity: each floor represents a different urban fragment, from raw industrial areas to refined cultural hubs. The design plays with changing atmospheres, materials, and scales to create a sequence of distinct yet connected worlds. Visitors move through spaces that shift from dark and immersive to bright and open, echoing how cities transition from underground stations to rooftop terraces, from quiet alleys to vibrant plazas.
The city was the main source of inspiration. Its diversity of architecture, textures, people, and rhythms shaped the spatial narrative. Rather than imposing a single aesthetic, the design celebrates the city’s complexity, where luxury and street culture coexist, and where new ideas emerge from contrast. The WOW store becomes a condensed city, an interior metropolis where exploration, discovery, and interaction define the shopping experience, a collective stage where social rituals take place, merging the physical and digital layers of the city. A similar idea guided the design of Plaza Mahou, where architecture and public space merge into a continuous landscape. The restaurant and brewery at Santiago Bernabéu, under the Mahou brand, celebrates Madrid’s essence by uniting three key elements: Real Madrid, the city, and Mahou beer. The project reimagines the city block not as a boundary but as a porous system of connections, much like a living square that extends the social life of Madrid into a new urban layer. It draws inspiration from the city’s streets, courtyards, and taverns, translating them into a dynamic, interconnected environment. The design celebrates diversity through experience. Each zone offers a different rhythm and atmosphere, from open gathering areas that evoke the energy of a public square to more intimate corners that recall the warmth of traditional bars. Together, they create a sequence of spaces that feel both spontaneous and familiar, much like wandering through the city itself.
Materiality and light play a central role. Brick, wood, and metal surfaces reference Madrid’s architectural textures, while warm tones and filtered light recreate the feel of sunset in the city. The space evolves throughout the day, from vibrant and open by daylight, to soft and intimate at night, mirroring the life cycle of a true plaza. It is a space that invites people to pause, meet, and share, rather than just pass through. In this sense, Plaza Mahou is not only a project in Madrid; it is a piece of Madrid itself, In our work with Vicio, we explore how operational spaces can take on an urban role, treating each site as an active presence in the city. The kitchens open themselves to the street through light, geometry, and clear identity. They celebrate and thrive around activity rather than conceal it. Their design transforms the everyday act of food preparation into part of the city’s ongoing narrative. Each Vicio project responds to its specific surroundings, becoming a beacon in their neighbourhood, while all following shared design intentions: to create visibility, movement, and engagement. Form, material, and atmosphere turn these spaces into fragments of collective experience, extending the values of urban. As the architecture of these buildings materialise urban landscapes, the spaces remain alive through participation, memory, and emotion of its inhabitants, individually and collectively working not just as an aggregation of buildings, but a field of shared experiences.
The Home as a Shared Experience:
If the city is a collective body, the home is its most intimate organ, a place where the bustle is drowned out, and the gestures of daily routine take on their domestic meaning. But what happens if we open our private spaces to the collective? If we engage in collective experiences in spaces that we identify as private? Does domesticity really need to be isolated? Can it open itself to others, and other ways of being, triggering the collective through exchange, reflection, and shared presence? This is the design philosophy that drives the WOW Penthouse, exploring this idea by transforming what we recognise as a private residence into a place to be lived collectively. It unfolds like a real apartment, where each space translates a familiar domestic function, reimagining the intimacy of a private apartment as a shared experience. Just like stepping into someone’s home, the space is personal, curated, and full of character, expanding these traits into a space that invites collective enjoyment. The concept transforms domestic comfort into a social setting, where the boundaries between private and public dissolve.
The spaces are shaped around the rituals of everyday living: cooking, gathering, and sharing. Diners and visitors can move from a kitchen that becomes a bar, to a dining area that turns into a stage, and a living space open to conversation. Every corner feels familiar yet charged with possibility, blurring the line between host and guest. The inspiration for the vibrance of these spaces come from Madrid itself, its culture of conviviality lived through its terraces, dinner parties, and spontaneous gatherings. The penthouse captures this exact spirit, as a pinnacle of design, gastronomy, and community. The penthouse becomes a lived-in narrative where personal space turns public, and the act of hosting becomes a celebration of collective life. Similarly to this idea of opening a domestic space for collective narratives, we can also look into the project of Casa Sayrach: a historically preserved modernist building in Barcelona designed in 1918 by Manuel Sayrach, inspired by natural and marine elements in homage to Catalonia and the Mediterranean. The main floor of the building was reformed by External Reference, transforming this emblematic once domestics space into a space for the city, and a new concept of a shared office, the Sayrach Principal Office Club.
The space is designed in harmony with the artistic tailor-made furniture, establishing a relationship of continuity and rupture at the same time and offering a dialogic reading of the context that enhances the characteristics of the space. An exclusive and contemporary space stems from the elements of the building: the structures and components of the organic world are monitored, studied, and designed through parametric design, the creative process that allows the finding of design solutions using data and parameters in the form of algorithms. Between organic morphologies and new technologies, craftsmanship, and digital, history and contemporaneity, a collection of rooms are created where you can dream, imagine, and create, or meet and produce new intellectual synergies, shaping new communities of practice and collective narratives. Domesticity is no longer a fixed condition but can become a spatial choice. A home can remain intimate while opening itself to collective life, and a historically private interior can become a place where ideas and communities grow. Design has the power to invite people to inhabit space, to share it, and to shape new forms of living through their presence. The spaces reveal themselves to a diversity of narratives and experiences.
Conclusion: Towards a Shared Living:
Architecture, beyond form and function, is a space that makes us feel. It is a choreography of movement, light, and texture that engages our senses and emotions. In our work, experience is not an addition to architecture, it is its substance. We design environments that communicate, shape how people move, how they meet, how they remember a place. Whether in the dense energy of a store or the calm of a home, these spaces come alive by being lived. This approach connects the scale of the room to that of the city. The same principles that guide the design of a plaza can guide the design of a living room or a stairwell. At External Reference, we think of architecture as a medium of connection, whether it be for an individual experience or a shared one. The physical merges with the digital, and form becomes narrative. In this sense, the boundary between the private and the collective is no longer a fixed one but shifts according to your encounters. The architecture is a space of transitions where the home opens itself to the city; the city finds intimacy in its interiors.
I believe that the future of living depends on our capacity to design spaces that nurture both moments of solitude and spaces of community. Whether a store, a plaza, or a home, every space is an opportunity to build relationships between people, scales and realities. To live, in this sense, is not only to occupy space, but to share it. And in that shared act, the private becomes collective, and the city becomes a home.
