4 min read
In search of a base in Europe where their family and friends could gather, a couple from Mexico finally settled on an unlikely site: 5,000 square feet of former office space in Madrid. The property happened to be in a grand 1920s building in the city’s tony Salamanca district, with views of the American embassy. To create a livable apartment, complete with period character, they turned to ELLE Decor A-List designers Mafalda Muñoz and Gonzalo Machado. The couple, founders of the Madrid design firm Casa Muñoz, relished the chance to work with a blank slate.
“It’s not their primary residence, so there were no heirlooms or art collections we had to incorporate, no workspaces or school routines to consider,” Muñoz says. “They wanted a place to unite as a family and celebrate. The rest was up to us.”
Matteo Verzini
Machado and Muñoz in the apartment’s dining room, next to a sculpture by Moisès Villèlia.
The owners had been drawn to the sophisticated but confidently unfussy ambience Muñoz and Machado bring to their interiors. Since its launch in 2012, Casa Muñoz has become synonymous with a pedigreed version of authentically Spanish design and lifestyle. The firm was tapped to create the first Forbes House private club, which opened in Madrid in late 2024. Other recent projects include homes in Miami and Rome, and the elegant restaurant at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, the contemporary art museum in Switzerland designed by Renzo Piano.
Muñoz and Machado, both Madrileños, have known each other since childhood and now have three kids of their own. She is local design royalty, the daughter of the late designer Paco Muñoz, who is credited with modernizing Spanish decor in the midst of the dreary Franco dictatorship. But she has cut her own path with refined, thoughtfully functional design rooted in tradition with contemporary flair.
“We invented the layout from scratch. Every single wall, floor, and ceiling is new.” —Mafalda Muñoz
For his part, Machado studied industrial and interior design before spending two decades as a photographer. His port-folio includes portraits of prominent figures, including King Juan Carlos I, as well as fashion, interiors, and lifestyle stories for virtually every Spanish publication. “Having spent 20 years looking through a viewfinder and telling a story without words—just through faces, fabrics, and objects—comes in handy when creating smart design,” he says.
Matteo Verzini
In the living room, an Hervé Van Der Straeten mirror hangs above a mantel designed by Casa Muñoz. The table and rug are by Machado-Muñoz Editions, the couple’s line of reissued custom pieces.
“Mafalda and Gonzalo have a real understanding of the nuance and feel of quality, the sense of solidity and permanence a home should have,” says Spanish model and actress Eugenia Silva, a longtime friend and client. “I hired them precisely because I didn’t want anything hippie-chic about my home in Madrid.”
The duo’s combined talents are on full display in the Salamanca apartment, where they completed the entire renovation in a breathtaking 10 months. “We invented the layout from scratch. Every single wall, floor, and ceiling is new,” Muñoz says. It’s now what she calls “a proper Madrid apartment,” a place that might be grand or dramatic or even a little sexy, but always practical and solid. “From our own backgrounds and experiences growing up, Gonzalo and I have a clear view of what makes a home, especially in the Spanish way of understanding home as the place where so much of life happens. Spaces that are well lived in and loved are what everyone wants.”
Matteo Verzini
The sectional in the TV room of the master suite is from Machado-Muñoz Editions. The ottoman is 19th-century English.
The designers started with a welcoming entry hall and a bar tucked discreetly into a nearby passageway. A series of flexible entertaining rooms unfold graciously from there. About a third of the home is given over to the primary suite, with another third housing smaller family and guest bedrooms, a kitchen, and other service rooms.
A focal point of the apartment is a round library that doubles as a home cinema (pictured top). “The owners are fanatics for sound quality,” says Machado, who notes that the room integrates 20 speakers and a video projector into the custom boiserie and bookshelves. A benefit of the property’s origins as office space is that state-of-the-art 21st-century systems could be built into what appears to be a Belle Epoque interior.
Matteo Verzini
The chandelier in the dining room is custom, and the painting is by Madrid artist Antonio Ballester Moreno.
An elevated mix of objects and textures is layered against a muted palette of grays and browns throughout. Contemporary ceramics that riff on ancient Greek red-figure vases sit atop burnished wood columns, and polished marble obelisks adorn sleek glass cocktail tables. Bronze griffins and other 19th-century Grand Tour objects share space with works by contemporary Spanish artists like Jacobo Castellano, Antonio Ballester Moreno, Carlos León, and Alvaro Negro. In the primary bedroom an ornate gilded 18th-century mirror hangs next to a matte 1990s riveted aluminum folding screen by Swedish designer Mats Theselius.
For all the apartment’s grandeur, Muñoz and Machado paid close attention to how their clients actually live. Case in point: the “clean kitchen,” an open-plan cooking and dining area where simple, casual meals can be shared with friends. Tucked at the back of the house, the “dirty kitchen” handles intensive cooking and cleaning for formal dining or entertaining.
Matteo Verzini
The counter and backsplash in the “clean kitchen” are arabescato marble; the pendants are Rose Uniacke. The stools are from Zara Home.
“Everyone loves the laid-back vibe of sipping wine in the kitchen while the host dresses a salad,” Muñoz remarks. “But pull a roasted turbot out of a hot oven and your guests get a blast of fishy odor and a dirty pan to look at. It can break the spell.”
A Closer Look at This Madrid Apartment
Open Gallery
This story originally appeared in the October 2026 issue of ELLE Decor. SUBSCRIBE