Two Worlds, Stacked

Katarina arrived at our studio carrying two things: a Moleskine notebook filled with photographs of rooftop gardens in Marrakech, and an ultimatum from her husband, Andrei, who had refused to attend the meeting because, in his words, "the last three designers agreed with everything we said and delivered nothing we wanted."

## The Problem of Two

Katarina and Andrei had purchased the duplex penthouse in Les Corts — 524 square metres across two floors, with a wraparound terrace below and a private rooftop above — precisely because it was large enough for two visions. Katarina, who had grown up in Dubrovnik surrounded by limestone and jasmine, wanted light, plants, outdoor living, and the feeling that Barcelona's sky was her ceiling. Andrei, who had built and sold three software companies and spent his downtime in the private members' clubs of London and Vienna, wanted something else entirely: dark walnut panels, marble surfaces that reflected candlelight, and a bathroom he described, without irony, as "a place where a man can be serious."

Their previous designer had attempted a compromise. The result — visible in the renders Katarina showed us — was a space that belonged to neither of them: too bright for Andrei, too enclosed for Katarina, and decorated in a palette of cautious beige that expressed nothing except the fear of making a choice.

## The Vertical Solution

We proposed something that the architecture itself suggested but no one had articulated: the penthouse was not one home. It was two homes, stacked. The lower floor — the main living space, the kitchen, the bedrooms — would be Andrei's world. The upper floor — the rooftop terrace, the pool, the outdoor kitchen — would be Katarina's.

Not separated. Connected. But with distinct identities that met at the staircase the way two people meet at a threshold, each carrying the atmosphere of the room they have just left.

## Andrei's Floor

The principal bathroom became our declaration of intent. Girona limestone — quarried less than a hundred kilometres north of the city — lined every surface, its warm beige veining absorbing the Mediterranean light with a gentleness that Andrei, who expected drama, had not anticipated. Colour-coded ceramic basin columns, designed from our personal sketches, brought sculptural presence against the stone's natural gravity. Dark walnut joinery lined the dressing room, its grain warm and deliberate. Bespoke wallcoverings — a botanical print in the bedroom, a graphic motif in the games room — asserted personality where lesser designers would have retreated into neutrality.

## Katarina's Sky

The rooftop was designed as a living garden suspended above Barcelona. Potted citrus trees — orange and lemon — lined the terrace perimeter, their glossy foliage filtering the afternoon light and perfuming the air with blossom from March onward. Olive trees anchored the corners, their silver canopies forming a soft counterpoint to the pool surround. The outdoor kitchen pavilion, clad in teak, was oriented to maximise the prevailing southwest sea breeze — operable glazed walls pivoting fully open from April through October.

From the pool, looking south, the city's tiled roofscape stretches to the port. From the kitchen island, looking up, the pool and the Mediterranean sky appear as a single unbroken plane of blue.

## What They Discovered

Andrei called us four months after completion. He had been sitting on the rooftop — Katarina's floor — watching the sunset behind Collserola. "I went up for a glass of wine," he said. "I stayed for three hours."

There was a pause. "Do not tell Katarina I said this, but her floor is better."

The best homes do not resolve their owners' contradictions. They give each contradiction its own address and let the staircase do the rest.