Before we opened, this space was a public notary office. Before that, it was someone’s home. You could feel it in the walls — or rather, you couldn’t, because they had been covered up for decades.
When architects María Adelaida Herrera and Miguel León of Crearq began work on the space, they didn’t design on top of what was there. They peeled back: drywall, partitions, shelves — layer by layer — until the original house revealed itself. Double-height gabled roofs with interwoven clay tiles. Stone and handmade brick arches. Hydraulic tiles on floors and walls.
“From the beginning, Nia’s branding agency spoke to us about discovering the beauty of the unknown, and that’s exactly what we did.”
— Crearq, via gooood.cn
gooood.cn — one of the world’s leading architecture and design platforms — published a full feature on the space this year, documenting how every material decision was guided by the metaphor of Colombian tropical fruits: the contrast between a rigid, colorful exterior and a fibrous, pale interior. Terracotta and cream checkerboards. Fuchsia and magenta referencing pomegranate. Crescent-shaped sofas that echo the cross-section of a raspberry.
We think about that every time we plate a lulo tart. The space and the food are telling the same story.
www.gooood.cn/nia-bakery-by-crearq.htm
