SPANISH ARTIST IGNASI MONREAL BUILDS A GOLD-LEAFED HOME FOR HIMSELF: A SPACE FOR THE MIND, NOT FOR DAILY LIFE.

As the artist Ignasi Monreal gazes at the sky and the rooftops of Madrid from the golden dome that is his home, he shares some words of warning: "Nothing here is practical or comfortable.

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Neither the cost nor the maintenance is worth it," says Barcelona-born Monreal. Five years ago, after deciding to end his nomadic existence and settle in Lisbon, he began to look for a place in Madrid so he could be closer to his family. "The different options I saw were quite generic and I wanted something unusual. I found a rendering of a tower with a dome online and I fell in love with it, so I bought the flat based only on drawings and plans," he recalls. "Once construction was finished and I visited it, I realised that I didn’t like it at all." It was the nightmare of any new owner: soulless and lacking personality. "So I decided to transform it completely." The possibility of using the pure white architecture as a canvas for a large-scale work occurred to him but he realised he wasn't interested in being surrounded by his own work. “I don't think everything I do has to have my stamp on it. It would be like living in an odd e