In Barcelona’s layered urban fabric, where modernist facades meet the skeletal remains of industrial spaces, Blow Models HQ quietly reimagines the idea of what a workspace can be. Led by designer Isern Serra, the project begins not with a design gesture, but with subtraction.
The false ceilings come down. The partitions are erased. What’s left is not emptiness, but potential. At its core, this is not just a place to work. It is a space designed to hold presence. Light becomes the anchor. A newly carved skylight—cut into the central warehouse volume—floods the interior with zenithal light, recalling ancient atriums and Mediterranean courtyards. Around it, the building organizes itself, as if gravitating toward something essential.
The headquarters of Blow Models—a Barcelona-based agency founded by Xavi and Natalia Fabregas—is not interested in status or spectacle. Instead, it offers something quieter: clarity, flexibility, and intention. It’s a place for models to move through and be seen, but also to pause. Spaces blur between function and backdrop. The steel reception bar becomes a sculptural object. A curtain transforms a casual entrance into a shoot set. A mirror becomes a tool, a wall, a reflector of light.
Serra refers to the idea of onyx spaces—environments that evoke dreamlike digital landscapes. Here, the concept is grounded: translated into textures, openings, reflections. The architecture doesn’t simulate a fantasy; it becomes one through restraint. Instead of filling the space, the team carves into it—introducing planters, voids, and cut-outs that create a slow rhythm of solid and hollow. There is no ceiling plane to flatten the eye. The volume is allowed to breathe.
This project is not about control; it is about letting the space speak again. Rather than impose new geometries, Serra preserves the distinct character of the two conjoined buildings: a modernist portal with ornate windows meets a raw, skeletal warehouse. Together, they create a tension—one refined, one rough—that mirrors the agency’s duality: fashion meets function.
