no image

The apartment was very modern, clean and comfortable, with everything you would need for a pleasant stay. The location was also very convenient for the centre of Barcelona. I would not hesitate to use Destination BCN again

The design and interior of the flat were above all expectations. It was decorated hearty and you feel as living in the modern flat rather than in a kind of hotel.

I wish that these apartments would be available in every city! Anne, Miklós, Patricia and Christian gave me their personal attention throughout my stay.

In the know

House style

Mid-century modernism

Grounds

Capital of Catalunyan cool

Sleeps

5 of the nine apartments have two bedrooms, and another 3 have sofa beds in the living room. All can sleep up to 4 people, except Apartment Principal, which has space for 6.

Ideal for

Design aficionados, cool young things, architecture addicts, foodie families.

Rates

€140–€350 for two people, with an extra €20–€40 a night for each extra person; excludes cleaning (€50–€90) and seven per cent tax. There’s also a charge for late check-in.

Minimum hire

Four nights, seven nights during local festivities or public holidays.

Also

Leave the pooch at home – pets are not allowed.

Back to top

Interior

Bedrooms 

Four apartments (Finn, Figi, Cañadilla, and Riva) have one bedroom, with sofa-beds in the living rooms; the others (Ghost, Walden, Pasa Doble, Principal and Cadaques) have two. Principal also has two fold-away beds suitable for younger guests. The bedrooms themselves differ between apartments, but all have supremely comfortable Swissflex beds, covered with Egyptian cotton sheets and offering a choice of goose feather pillows or firmer, anti-allergy alternatives. Two bedrooms (one in Figi and one in Walden) have smart, modern four-posters and the bedrooms in Ghost, Principal and Cadaques have en-suite bathrooms too.

Kitchen Apartment kitchens are fully kitted out with state-of-the-art appliances and the best of the basics, with fridge-freezers, microwave ovens, induction hobs, toasters, coffeemakers, juicers, and blenders. The cupboards are stocked with essentials such as coffee, tea, herbs, spices, oils and vinegars, too.

Living room Lounge spaces differ from apartment to apartment, but all have flatscreen TVs hooked up to Sky, with DVD and CD players attached. Sofas and armchairs vary in colour and style and most of the unique features, such as coffee tables, lampshades and ornaments, have a design luminary’s name attached.

Dining room All the apartments have Poliform dining tables to seat four – six in Prinicpal. Both Principal and Cadaques have dining areas in their open-air courtyards too.

Other Destination BCN’s bathrooms are, as you’d expect, immaculate, and all have showers at a minimum. Upping the luxury, ablution-wise, Apartments Cañadilla and Figi have combination shower/baths, and Principal has a rain shower and a gorgeous free-standing Agape tub in the master bedroom.

Outdoor

no image

Gardens 

Parking Destination BCN doesn’t provide parking, but there is a handful of public car parks not far away; Plaza Castilla in front of the building charges €22 a day.

Back to top

Planes Destination BCN can arrange direct transfers from Barcelona airport for €60, or you can hop in a cab outside arrivals for around €20. Buses to the city centre run every 15 minutes; a ticket costs about €3.

Trains The 30-minute train journey from airport to Plaza Catalunya (three minutes’ walk from the apartments) costs around €2; trains run every half an hour. Spain also has a reasonably priced national network but book ahead as trains get busy (www.renfe.com).

Local taxi service You can hail cabs from anywhere on the street, or ask the Destination BCN concierge to order a car for you – they use Francisco (+ 34 (0)6 5182 9232), or Cars Deluxe for (+34 (0)9 3308 2561) special occasions.

Directions by road Navigating Barcelona’s one-way system can be tricky, as can parking, but follow signs to Plaza Catalunya – the city’s main square. The suites are located just off the square on Ronda Universitat.

Review

Anne and Miklós, the switched-on design duo behind the nine luxury-packed apartments at Ronda Universitat 11, have devoted the bulk of the last few years fine-tuning and tweaking the exquisite work-in-progress they call Destination BCN. They may call themselves as ‘professional amateurs with enthusiasm’ (which – if you know the origins of Mr & Mrs Smith – makes our entrepreneurial hearts go pitter-patter), but one look around their own architectural achievements, and you see that their modesty is misplaced.

The taste-making twosome have taken an art nouveau building moments from Barcelona’s bustling Plaza Catalunya and turned it into a collection of hip and homely city hideaways that have all the style and service of a boutique hotel, and all the cosy comforts of an indulgent urbanite’s pied à terre.

The warm, neutral colour schemes and natural materials used throughout the apartments belie a much more international flavour. The handmade wooden side tables are from Senegal and the retro coffee table, Denmark. The pared-down, clean-lined sofa in Apartment Cadaques is classical Catalan cool. The Louis XV chairs and breezy balconies – French through and through. The ‘lampscape’ in Apartment Finn hails not from Scandinavia as its name suggests but from Anne’s mother-Netherland. Green plants bring flashes of life and colour to the Vermeer-worthy palette of chocolate browns, crisp whites, creamy toffees, and steely greys.

Although the colours and design themes are a common thread running through the apartments, these are far from cookie-cutter condos – each one has been treated as a separate design project. Ghost is appropriately white and dreamlike (although every so often, just for the hell of it, Anne and Miklós reverse the furnishings so that everything turns black), with earthy touches in the shape of rustic coffee tables fashioned from reclaimed wood and exposed red-brick walls behind the beds. Paso Doble is warmer and woodier, with a bay window offering views out over the city. Finn plays light and dark against each other to surprisingly cosy effect, thanks to its aubergine wall and brown leather furnishings, and Riva eschews the whiteness altogether, replacing it with a striking bachelor-esque black. Cañadilla, named after a tiny sea snail once used to make purple dye, is aptly dressed in mauve. Olive green notes differentiate Walden, which has balconies in both its bedrooms, and one boasts a four-poster bed – as does Figi, a bluey-grey space ornamented by timeless design pieces such as a black BKF chair, Philippe Starck’s Rosie Angelis lamp and a side table cunningly carved from the roots of a tree. Of the two headline Suites, Cadaques – the largest apartment  – marries seventies LA style to contemporary Catalan chic to create a sandy-toned private pad with a glass back wall that opens out into a courtyard dotted with tropical flora. Principal feels more like a spacious Manhattan loft, with white-painted brick walls, a bathroom featuring sauna-style wooden paneling, a huge free-standing Agape Spoon bath-tub in the bedroom, and, the piece de resistance, a huge private courtyard with a remote control canopy roof that allows you to let in your sunlight to order.

Although you can request a caterer, part of the pleasure of staying in Barcelona is foraging for food in some of the world’s most amazing food markets. La Boqueria is the place to pick up freshly sliced pata negra, squirmingly seasonal seafood, plump olives, almonds, and cold sherry to prepare back in the culinary comfort of your apartment kitchen, and serve, triumphant, on the Poliform dining table.

Before you go thinking the place is –  in proper Poppins-style – practically perfect in every way (and it really is), it’s good to be reminded that every renovation project has its quirks. Need to send a fax, make a photocopy, or just fancy a drink from the water cooler? The foibles of Spanish bureaucracy require that one floor of the building remains office space (think the seventh-and-a-half floor in Being John Malkovich). Odd, but at least this means there’s on-site security in the building during office hours.

Creative, lively, exuberant Barcelona is a place where great ideas are born and tinkered with, sat on, mulled over, challenged, returned to, developed, and pushed just a bit further – Gaudi worked on multiple masterpieces in the city for the last 40 years of his life and those inspired by his vision have continued to realise his dreams for 80 years and counting. Here’s hoping Anne, Miklós and their trusty team have the same level of endurance and carry on creating stylish, Smithesque places to stay for years to come. It’s astonishing to think that what started off as simply looking after friends’ apartments has turned this marvellous Modernista building into the best address in town. If the resulting residence is anything to go by, Anne and Miklos can flat-sit for us any time.

Reviewed by Mary Garvin

Back to top