Budget Breakdown: A Barcelona Bachelor Pad Gets Radically Reimagined for €10,000

Money may be a taboo topic for some, but that was not the case with Martí Delclòs when he sought out Mireia Luzárraga and Alejandro Muiño, the couple behind Takk Architecture. Martí, a content strategist with a background in design, had just purchased an apartment—offered at a price he couldn’t refuse—in Barcelona’s hilly El Coll neighborhood. He had heard the architects lecture as an undergraduate and felt drawn to "their existential attitude, their way of being in the world," says Martí. "They fit my hope of beating the system and building the ‘ecological class’ French philosopher Bruno Latour defines in Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climactic Regime."

When he met Luzárraga and Muiño, he brought his bank statements, disclosed his mortgage payments and monthly paychecks, and detailed his expenses to come up with what he could save per month. "It was super transparent," says Luzárraga. Martí wanted to explode the constraints of a traditional home to create a space "open to the field of imagination," as he puts it, while remaining functional and practical—all on a budget of 10,000 euros.

"Normally, when you have 10,000 euros, the priorities are painting, or renovating the toilet or kitchen," says Luzárraga. "We had to do an exercise of setting priorities, and we were very radical: What we usually do when we have 10,000 euros is exactly what we didn’t do."