When South Africans Jason and Tessa Boshoff went searching for an affordable apartment in Barcelona, they found a rundown 70-square-meter flat in the city’s Gothic quarter and hired designers Monica Potvin and Markel Otaola to turn the small space into a home for their family of four and an office for Jason.

Wanting to take full advantage of a long, narrow space, the team turned a hallway into a narrow, “galley” kitchen. To reduce the corridor even further, they eliminated the other end by opening up the two bedrooms and using a bathroom and huge barn doors on rollers for separation.

Attempting to preserve as much as possible – like the hydraulic floor tiles and vaulted ceiling- the Boshoffs asked Potvin and Otaola (Fabrique Design + Build) to use an old balcony door (that needed to be removed) as huge bathroom doors.

The transforming space works well as home-office for Jason (he’s a music producer) and for their occasional need for privacy, but mostly the family leaves their bedroom barn doors rolled open, inviting a closer family dynamic. “When we moved into a house in London that had a dining room in the kitchen, we were straightaway together more, everything got better immediately,” explains Jason. “And this is actually just an extension of that where, we’re sort of always together.”