{"id":102038,"date":"2025-10-28T09:15:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T09:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/102038\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T09:15:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T09:15:09","slug":"lucas-munoz-converts-1960s-office-into-offbeat-furniture-showroom-colab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/102038\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucas Mu\u00f1oz converts 1960s office into offbeat furniture showroom CoLab"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spanish designer Lucas Mu\u00f1oz<\/a> has created a showroom for furniture brand Sancal<\/a> in a former office building in Madrid<\/a>, reusing all materials from the original space that could not be recycled.<\/p>\n

CoLab<\/a> is located on the fourth floor of the O’Donnell 34 building, which was designed in 1966 by architect Antonio Lamela and is considered to be Madrid’s first modern office building.<\/p>\n

\"SeatingLucas Mu\u00f1oz has created a showroom for Sancal in Madrid<\/p>\n

Sancal<\/a> and Mu\u00f1oz<\/a> set out to transform the 300-square-metre space into a hybrid showroom and workspace, called CoLab, where clients can experience Sancal’s colourful and playful furniture in a setting that reflects the importance of a collective approach to design projects.<\/p>\n

The interior, which has been shortlisted for a 2025 Dezeen Award<\/a>, promotes circularity through the reuse of materials and the reassembly of existing elements, while also attempting to match the per-metre cost of an equivalent standard office refurbishment.<\/p>\n

\"SeatingCoLab is set in a former 1960s office building<\/p>\n

Basing their approach on the motto “what can’t be recycled remains”, Mu\u00f1oz and his team carefully dismantled the existing office, which was refurbished in the 1990s to house a notary firm.<\/p>\n

Non-structural partitions were removed, creating a more modern, open floor plan. Technical solutions like floating floors and false ceilings were also stripped away to reveal the original terrazzo floors and concrete columns, which the team restored.<\/p>\n

\"TimberMu\u00f1oz transformed existing fluorescent lights into LED fixtures with wooden frames<\/p>\n

“The office’s modular material approach allowed us to dismantle and re-consider each piece as a potential intervention element,” Mu\u00f1oz told Dezeen.<\/p>\n

“Very little demolition was required, meaning recovered pieces could be evaluated according to their impact to decide if they must stay or if they could be recycled.”<\/p>\n

\"ConcreteThe building’s existing concrete columns and terrazzo floors were exposed<\/p>\n

Salvaged materials were repurposed as part of a workshop-style project that lasted several months and involved architects, designers, artisans and socially driven organisations.<\/p>\n

Construction company Zimenta helped Mu\u00f1oz’s team find new uses for the materials, including composite flooring and ceiling systems that would otherwise have been scrapped.<\/p>\n

The ceiling panels were broken down into smaller pieces using a custom-made steel comb and then combined with plaster to create a textured cladding used for the wall of the entrance area.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

Lucas Mu\u00f1oz creates Tubular furniture from ventilation pipes and scrap metal\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

The aluminium undersides of existing flooring plates were polished and applied to walls so their reflective surfaces amplify daylight entering through nearby windows.<\/p>\n

Non-profit Asociaci\u00f3n Norte Joven<\/a>, which supports young people at risk of social exclusion, was responsible for transforming the fluorescent light housings into LED fixtures featuring bespoke wooden frames.<\/p>\n

New walls required for the toilets were created by cutting existing masonry walls loose from the floor and ceiling, then setting them on wheels and repositioning them in a way that produced no waste.<\/p>\n

\"WallThe aluminium undersides of existing flooring plates were turned into wall panels<\/p>\n

Other examples of material reuse include repurposing aluminium from existing partitions as shelving and transforming steel pedestals into coat hooks and handles.<\/p>\n

One of the most challenging things about this approach was figuring out what to do with materials in the lag time between their demolition and repurposing, Mu\u00f1oz explained<\/p>\n

\"SeatingCoLab was designed to be a hybrid showroom and workspace<\/p>\n

“The biggest lesson from the project is that transforming a construction site into a material laboratory for in-situ transformation implies a high level of space organisation and process scheduling,” he said.<\/p>\n

“This is very uncommon, since the normal process is that old materials leave and new ones arrive. In our experimental approach, nothing leaves.”<\/p>\n

\"ChandelierThe old fluorescents were also turned into a giant chandelier<\/p>\n

Mu\u00f1oz operates his multidisciplinary studio from Madrid, employing a hands-on approach to his exploration of functionality and materiality in objects and spaces.<\/p>\n

His previous projects include a restaurant interior created almost entirely using upcycled construction waste<\/a>\u00a0and a sculptural chair made from repurposed ventilation pipes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The photography is by Asier Rua.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spanish designer Lucas Mu\u00f1oz has created a showroom for furniture brand Sancal in a former office building in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[8333,437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46,67266,7501,21591,17148,67265,448,13912,54504,2727],"class_list":{"0":"post-102038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-adaptive-reuse","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-lucas-muu00f1oz","18":"tag-madrid","19":"tag-reclaimed-materials","20":"tag-renovations","21":"tag-sancal","22":"tag-sectionall","23":"tag-sectioninteriors","24":"tag-showrooms","25":"tag-spain"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}