Salamanca's bourgeois grid, Madrid's most patrician barrio, provides the setting for Totem Madrid — a property that turns the well-mannered bones of a classic ensanche apartment building into something considerably more charged. The design, led by the Madrid studio Alfaro Manrique Arquitectos, works the interior with an accumulation of pattern and saturated colour that sits in deliberate contrast to the restrained early-twentieth-century facade outside. Geometric tilework in Moorish-inflected arrangements covers floors and wall panels, wrought ironwork references the decorative vocabulary of Spanish vernacular craft, and warm terracotta tones run through the common spaces alongside deep ochres and forest greens that feel specific to the Castilian interior rather than borrowed from any international playbook. The 72 rooms navigate the building's existing residential plan with furniture that mixes mid-century Spanish pieces with contemporary upholstery in textiles of considerable density and warmth. Headboards rise to emphasise ceiling height, and bathrooms receive the same commitment to pattern as the public areas — encaustic tiles laid in geometric progressions, brushed-brass fixtures. The rooftop terrace, which looks across the Salamanca roofline toward the Sierra de Guadarrama on clear days, is dressed with planted screens and low sofas in weather-resistant linen. What Totem does well is remain emphatically local, treating craft traditions not as folkloric ornament but as the primary design language of the entire building.

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