Architectural Cases

The Mexican ceramic studio SAUDARA, spearheaded by Ivana Sánchez and María Padilla, is redefining the role of clay, transforming it from a mere raw material into a conduit for cultural expression. This atelier produces a range of items, including dinnerware, vessels, and various household objects, all infused with a modern sensibility that honors Mexico's rich craft traditions and cultural identity. Instead of merely preserving heritage as a museum piece, SAUDARA brings it to the forefront of daily life, encouraging interaction and immersion.

SAUDARA Ceramics: Bridging Heritage and Modernity Through Design

SAUDARA's collections are distinguished by their understated shapes and eloquent surfaces, where the material itself speaks volumes. Vibrant glazes, natural clay textures, and nuanced variations imbue these otherwise simple forms with a distinctive character. This approach expertly balances utility with an artistic flair, preventing any sense of formality at the dining table. From elegant bowls to intricate vessels and serving pieces, SAUDARA views ceramics as objects that gain profound significance through consistent handling and use, embodying stories and memories over time.

A prime example of this philosophy is the Amapola salad bowl, featuring the studio's unique serrano glaze. Here, a straightforward functional item transcends its basic purpose to become a canvas for captivating color and texture. Similarly, the Archive collection delves into how a consistent family of forms can manifest diverse personalities through different surface treatments. Whether appearing in a muted dirty taupe glaze or a striking combination of onyx glaze and natural red clay, these pieces demonstrate a deliberate exploration of variation rather than reinvention. Material and finish adjustments allow familiar designs to adopt new identities without compromising their practical function. For SAUDARA, a subtle alteration in surface is often sufficient to make a powerful artistic statement.

Furthermore, SAUDARA actively engages in collaborative projects that broaden its domestic design vocabulary. A notable partnership with the floral studio Granada led to the creation of a tea set and kenzan (a spiky flower holder), uniting ceramics and flower arrangement in a harmonious composition. This collaboration transforms the acts of serving and arranging into complementary rituals, elevating the pieces from mere practical objects to miniature domestic landscapes. This initiative further underscores SAUDARA's commitment to creating objects that are active participants in daily routines, rather than passive decorative elements.

The studio's ceramic bowls, known as 'los chawanes,' epitomize this focus on intimate, hand-scaled items. Collectively, SAUDARA's work offers a quietly contemporary interpretation of Mexican ceramics, advancing craft, material, and identity without confining them to a static past. These creations are designed to be cherished companions in their owners' lives—to be filled, shared, rearranged, and, most importantly, to be actively used rather than left gathering dust on a shelf.

The work of SAUDARA Ceramic Atelier serves as a powerful reminder that art and utility need not be mutually exclusive. Their commitment to integrating traditional Mexican craftsmanship with contemporary design principles offers a refreshing perspective on everyday objects. It challenges us to consider the stories embedded within the items we use, encouraging a deeper appreciation for the tactile and visual experiences they provide. This approach not only preserves cultural heritage but also propels it forward, making it relevant and resonant in modern living spaces. It inspires us to seek out products that are not just functional but also carry a soul, contributing to a more meaningful and aesthetically rich daily existence.

Crafting Adaptive Living: A New Paradigm for Home Design

Challenging the Traditional Floor Plan: More Than Just Rooms

Eduardo Mediero, the driving force behind HANGHAR, critiques the real estate market's tendency to reduce architecture to a series of functional labels like "three-bedroom apartment." He argues that this focus neglects crucial elements such as natural light, airflow, spatial proportion, and overall quality of living. HANGHAR's foundational principle is to design homes where every space isn't immediately named or assigned a fixed purpose, allowing for greater versatility and a more personal connection between residents and their environment.

Ronda House: A Pioneering Approach to Open-Ended Living

The Ronda House project exemplifies HANGHAR's innovative vision. In renovating an 85-square-meter apartment in Murcia, the studio eschewed a conventional room hierarchy. Instead, they crafted an asymmetrical arrangement of interconnected areas, each spatially distinct yet programmatically flexible, unified by generous central openings. Mediero emphasizes that this was not merely about removing walls, but about minimizing architectural dictates, allowing the home to be a fluid setting where life unfolds organically, rather than a structure imposing a predefined lifestyle.

The Evolution of Adaptable Spaces: From Lara House to Casa Gracia

This experimental design philosophy continued with Lara House, a 65-square-meter Madrid apartment featuring four visually connected rooms without fixed functions. Key elements like a fireplace and kitchen provide subtle anchors, but the architecture deliberately avoids prescribing usage. HANGHAR demonstrates that flexibility isn't about movable walls, but about creating spaces with inherent atmospheric and dimensional qualities that can accommodate various activities over time. Casa Gracia pushes this further with hexagonal rooms and interlocking antechambers, reimagining the corridor not as residual space, but as a dynamic area that can serve multiple purposes, from storage to an extension of other rooms.

Rethinking Privacy: A Spectrum of Separation in Studiolo

While promoting openness, HANGHAR also explores nuanced approaches to privacy. The Studiolo project in Madrid, completed in 2024, saw the studio transform a 1970s apartment by inserting a compact, deep-green cabinet-room at its core. Inspired by Renaissance-era studiolos, this central object acts as both storage and a secluded retreat, leaving the surrounding areas largely undefined. Mediero views privacy not as a binary state, but as a gradient influenced by distance, scale, light, materials, and orientation. Studiolo effectively creates an intense pocket of solitude while ensuring the rest of the home remains available for unforeseen uses, offering a more sophisticated understanding of personal space.

Beyond Interiors: Integrating Production into Flexible Design

HANGHAR's exploration of flexible living now extends to construction methods. Casa Guadalupe, scheduled for completion in Gijón in 2025, investigates how this resistance to predetermined solutions can be applied to the building process itself. This 120-square-meter house utilized off-site prefabrication with a lightweight steel structure, assembling on its Asturian plot in just 48 hours. By drawing inspiration from local architectural forms like agricultural sheds and casa mariñanas, HANGHAR demonstrates that industrialization doesn't necessitate generic design. Instead, it can be a framework that responds thoughtfully to topography, climate, and local culture, expanding the design inquiry from internal organization to material choices, assembly, and regional context.

A Decisive Architectural Journey: The HANGHAR Legacy

With a self-imposed ten-year lifespan set to conclude on December 31, 2030, HANGHAR operates with a distinct sense of urgency. This finite period compels the studio to rigorously test and push the boundaries of their architectural concepts. Through projects like Ronda House, Lara House, Casa Gracia, Studiolo, and Casa Guadalupe, a consistent question emerges: which aspects of domestic architecture are truly essential, and which have merely become ingrained because we stopped questioning their inevitability? HANGHAR's work challenges designers and inhabitants alike to reconsider the fundamental principles that shape our homes, advocating for a more conscious and adaptable built environment.