An Old Bakery, A New Home
This story begins in an old abandoned bakery in the neighbourhood of Es Fortí, in Palma. The day when the architect Santiago Martín– Borregón (Palma, 1990) entered it for the first time he felt a strong energy that he couldn’t shake off. Today it is his residence, and his most personal project. He named it NZ10, and has won several sustainability and design awards for it.
text Angie Ramón
photography José Hevia





The old Arroyo bakery was built in the 1950s, and abandoned at the beginning of this century. It was a very well-known place in the Es Fortí neighbour- hood, one where freshly-baked bread and cakes were made every day. Until it closed down and fell into oblivion. And then a young architect, Santiago, the founder of Auba Studio, decided to give it a second lease of life.
In 2023 the NZ10 project won the Art Jove Architecture and Interior Design Prize awarded by the Government of the Balearic Islands, and participated in the prestigious architecture festival Open House Palma.
“My partner and I were looking for a flat in Palma for over a year – a difficult task because the market is very aggressive. But when we saw these premises, I could feel the energy, and I just knew this could be our place”, Santiago recalls regarding the residence, a ground-floor space covering 106 m2 with a patio of 51 m2, the alterations to which were completed in 2022.
It is precisely the patio that conserves the only acknowledgement of what the former Arroyo bakery was: its walls. “When we removed the tiles we loved the texture that was underneath, the shapes on the wall. The remodelling was intense [...]
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