Casa Camper
Barcelona, Spain
Jordi Tió with Fernando Amat / Vinçon

Playfulness symbolizes a Spanish shoemaker's first step into hospitality

© Jordi Bernado

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

Camper, a Spanish firm that designs footwear favored by hip twenty-somethings worldwide, decided to branch into the hospitality business, extending its brand from clothing into shelter and food. For its first project, it commissioned designer Fernando Amato and architect Jordi Tió to transform a 19th-century apartment house located on a busy street between the Ramblas and the MACBA museum in Barcelona's historic El Raval neighborhood.

The seven-story building occupies an irregularly shaped plot and as a result features a trapezoidal floor plan. Its construction is typical of the region, with supporting walls comprised of iron ingot and a unidirectional framework with wooden beams and ceramic vaulting. Renovations consisted of rehabilitating the historic façade and completely gutting the interior, which was necessary to accommodate the hotel program and to repair extensive termite damage to the structure. The building is now organized around two circulation cores. Its upper floors contain guest rooms, while reception areas occupy the ground floor and a basement level accommodates meeting rooms. A rooftop “attic” contains service functions as well as a guest terrace that offers panoramic views of the city.

Guests who enter Casa Camper for the first time often think they have entered a bicycle shop or an art gallery; ten bicycles hang suspended from the ceiling, intended for the use of hotel patrons. Flanking this reception area, a glass wall reveals the profile of suitcases as well as objects salvaged from the building during its past life as an apartment block. The lobby's playfulness is an inside joke for the guests, intended to confuse other visitors. Upstairs, the guest rooms look out over a “vertical garden” that is comprised of 117 potted aspidistras plants stacked on a 60-foot-tall shelf. Planted, cultivated, and maintained in a special greenhouse during the three years it took to build the hotel, the vertical garden is Casa Camper's most striking visual element.

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Formal name of Project:
Casa Camper

Location:
Barcelona, Spain

Owner:
Camper
Finca Son Fortesa
ALARO Majorca
971-507-000

Architect(s):
Jordi Tió
934-585-888 tel.

Fernando Amat
VINÇON
Passeig de Gracia, 96
08008 Barcelona
932-156-050 tel.
www.vincon.com