The housing of our time does not yet exist. This phrase, used by Mies van der Rohe almost a century ago, could well be used today, although it is true that awareness of the situation has been raised and the advances in collective housing are great and well-directed. However, we must achieve domestic structures in keeping with the social melting pot of our times, capable of being easily built and maintained, typologies resulting from industrialized guidelines, and more sustainable, durable, and recyclable materials. The project gives shape to and materializes these challenges through a 'symmetrical' typology around a functionally fixed nucleus formed by the home or kitchen, the place for meeting and eating together, as well as personal hygiene. The rest of the house is made up of dimensionally identical spaces around it, capable of being converted into bedrooms, living, working, playing, and personal development areas. These rooms can be combined and completed with two outdoor areas, a balcony and an area linked to the common access gallery to the house, ambiguous limits capable of being incorporated into the domestic activity and which stimulate relations between the interior and the exterior. The typology is dimensioned in such a way that it can revolve around its central axis, achieving a palindrome house with an open concept, with a double orientation, both solar and functional. 

From here, the overall solution is achieved by repetition of the type. The result is a building with a 14-meter centreline, oriented north-south, in which the vertical access bodies are made profitable by limiting them to two and opting for the system of galleries or corridors on each floor, which allows the community to be offered a series of relationship spaces designed to be appropriated by the inhabitants, places for relationships, meetings and leisure in domestic life. The galleries expand in their connection to each dwelling so that the house has an immediate exterior space of sufficient dimension to be used for multiple activities, an extension of an immediate interior that is also conceived as a polyvalent room. This surface seeks to favor ambiguous, resilient, and useful spaces for everyday and exceptional situations such as pandemics.

The contemporary housing project must advance on the concept of the open house. Just as the sociologist Richard Sennett has claimed the same quality for the design of cities, a design that must incorporate the complexity and diversity, the variable and mutable nature of urban life, the same must be done with collective housing. We must achieve domestic structures capable of being easily adapted, built, and maintained, a typology in keeping with the liquid condition of society. The project gives shape to and materializes these challenges through the concept of the Revolving House. It proposes a residential type of symmetrical bays that develops openly around a functionally fixed nucleus, formed by the home or kitchen, the place for meeting and eating together, as well as personal hygiene. The rest of the house is made up of dimensionally identical spaces around it, capable of becoming rooms for intimacy, a living area or an area for teleworking and personal development. Finally, the house is completed with two outdoor areas, ambiguous limits capable of being incorporated into the domestic activity and which stimulate relations between the interior and the exterior. The typology is dimensioned in such a way that it can revolve around its central axis, achieving a house that is doubly oriented and spatially and functionally palindromic.

Se proyecta un local de atención al público para el Servicio Vasco de Empleo LANBIDE y para el Servicio Público de Empleo SEPE. Ambos comparten el mismo espacio aunque con atención diferenciada.

El proyecto procura construir un espacio de trabajo y atención con las mejores condiciones ambientales posibles, tanto para trabajadores como usuarios. Así, se decide aprovechar al máximo las capacidades geométricas del local, configurando una sala longitudinal en la que se organiza el mayor número posible de mesas de atención. Este gran espacio se pauta con un techo de madera dentado y una sucesión de grandes huecos verticales a fachada, generando una imagen arquitectónica cuyo atractivo reside en la potencia de la profundidad, la perspectiva y el orden de techo y huecos. Un mobiliario adaptado a las dimensiones del espacio así como el diseño integrado de luminarias y climatización en los dientes del techo acaban por configurar un ambiente tranquilo para trabajadores, lumínica y acústicamente confortable, al tiempo que personal, sereno y de cierta distinción para el público que utiliza a la oficina.

El espacio principal se orienta al este para ubicar la entrada de público desde esta fachada y las salas secundarias (despachos, multiusos, zona reservada) se sitúan cercanas a la entrada de personal, localizada en el punto opuesto a la primera, es decir, en la fachada oeste y al otro extremo del local. La posición de ambas es estratégica ya que discrimina ambos tráficos, evitando además el encuentro entre los vecinos del edificio y los usuarios que acuden diariamente al local.

Exteriormente ha querido respetarse el orden material y geométrico del edificio. Para ello se han modificado las mochetas iniciales con las que contaba previamente la planta baja, consiguiendo ventanas y paños opacos de similar ancho y pauta que los existentes en niveles superiores.

The project is based on a system of courtyards and vestibules linked to the homes, taking advantage of the building's access areas as places for the expansion of domestic life. Each house is associated with an outdoor space immediately outside its door that is large enough to be colonised for multiple activities. This surface area seeks to inspire ambiguous spaces, necessary for everyday and exceptional situations. The Covid pandemic has highlighted the lack of resilience of collective housing. The inclusion of this type of place, without a specific use, in the communal areas, as well as the structure of the proposed residential type, allows for the construction of a small habitat that can be expanded in its immediate surroundings. The house includes this hallway where one can exercise and play games, read peacefully or organise a dinner with friends; a small work area has even been thought of in the living room. Each level of the building is provided with a small space for the use of its dwellings and, finally, a ground floor is organised for the whole neighbourhood. All these spaces generate an ecosystem of their own that acquires productive capacity, urban autonomy and a life of its own. 

The proposal is based on the will to adapt intelligently to the pre-existing CEBT (Centre for Technology-Based Companies) building, sharing functionalities with it, taking advantage of the infrastructure already built and improving it with the controlled intervention in the undeveloped spaces of the site. Thus, a new volume is proposed -of similar dimensions to the CEBT- positioned in the southern area of the plot that is the object of the competition, at a distance of ten metres from the former. Both buildings are connected by an enclosed passageway, creating two architecturally controlled exterior spaces that are proposed as places for extending the interior activity. It is also proposed to consider the entrance to the new building from the CEBT, although it is possible to access both facilities through the new structure that links them.

The project for the Gogora Institute's New Exhibition Space proposes a serene, neutral and discreet volume on the outside, inside which two types of spaces are structured: an exhibition ring with four themed rooms containing the Institute's informative content, and a central agora for reflection in which the public can internalise the message received and share what they have learnt.

The new pavilion aims to build a particular personal experience. The user begins by understanding History according to a succession of clearly and physically separated Memory Rooms, and then enters a final room without context - the agora - in which the protagonist is not the content, nor the container, but himself and his reflection. The perimeter spaces display the testimonies of the different Memories through an architectural scenario integrated with the museographic proposal; the second transcends any spatial conception to construct the void through light and the absence of material features, altering the user's mood and preparing him for the personal conclusion.

The building is proposed on the basis of constructional and structural rationality, seeking to reduce to the maximum the impact of the new construction in relation to the courtyard and basement in which it stands. Its execution is conceived on the basis of dry assembly, materials and modulated elements of manageable size, avoiding reinforced concrete and brick partitions, resorting to the assembly of the metallic structure, to the workshop assembly of all the furniture and to the dry joint.

The project seeks to enhance the specific values of La Lechera Industrial Complex through two project strategies: recognising and strengthening the essential structure of the heritage complex and incorporating new architectural elements that establish a dialogue with history, allowing the incorporation of a contemporary and flexible programme over time. The proposal advocates the substitution of the less relevant spaces of the complex for a new system of volumes that articulates all the halls that compose it, both in their internal -functional and spatial- and external -landscape and urban- relations. This operation achieves a single entrance for both Centres (Cultural and Exhibition), creates a large foyer in a more intermediate position and articulates a series of common spaces that serve both the Schools and the North Collection.

The proposal is resolved as a space of intermediation not only between the sea and the land, but also between the natural and the urban. It proposes a combination of articulated actions that close the gap between both habitats, aiming to environmentally restore the environment through the most valuable ecological and human values of the place.

The local conditions (the imposing topography, the Mediterranean Sea, the landscape specificities, the existing infrastructures -among which the Ecological Promenade stands out- and the built background) have been balanced according to the dissolution of the limits between landscape and city. These realities end up becoming a unit by accentuating the architectural fact as an element that builds public space and incorporates nature as a culturally understood landscape.

The interventions on the edges between water and land articulate the entire operation. From the pedestrian access to the Cove to its East end, a succession of new sections enriches the approach to the water, improves access, eliminates architectural and visual barriers, geometrically arranges the surface that enclaves and even, through a singular gesture of prolongation of the platform, penetrates the water. 

Con Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra

La propuesta para el Parque de Ribera del Nervión en Galindo se resuelve como un conjunto de espacios de intermediación entre Barakaldo y la Ría. Una combinación de ambientes articulados entre sí que solucionan la desconexión entre ambos hábitats, construyendo un sistema de múltiples lugares públicos ligados sin solución de continuidad. La disolución de los límites entre arquitectura, ciudad y naturaleza crea una unidad en la que el hecho arquitectónico construye espacio público, la naturaleza se concibe como un paisaje entendido culturalmente y la ciudad como un objeto común que concilia a ambos con la gente.

En consecuencia, el proyecto estructura el Parque en dos niveles topográficos, el fluvial y el urbano, relacionados por una arquitectura de espacios ambiguos que funcionan a la vez como lugares de transición pero también de permanencia. Uno de los elementos sustanciales encargados de articular toda la operación es una gran estructura de madera, una intervención arquitectónica que contiene en su concepción las ideas de Plaza cubierta y Cubierta verde. Este objeto se convierte en un importante hito urbano que resuelve con un único gesto los problemas del ámbito: la ciudad se prolonga definitivamente hasta el agua, hundiendo su extremo en la Dársena de Portu y diluyendo la frontera entre Ría y Barakaldo. La idea también permite construir un gran plano ajardinado en su cubierta y una potente línea paralela a la Ría, ambos reivindicando el deseo de la ciudad de acercarse al borde fluvial y borrar para siempre la frontera del ferrocarril. En su cara inferior, la estructura ofrece generosa cobertura como punto de encuentro y actos al aire libre resguardados, funciona como brazo bajo el cual el Parque de Ribera fluye mezclándose con la ciudad y singulariza la entrada al Parque al funcionar como una gran Puerta de escala metropolitana. En torno a este plano toda una serie de rampas, escaleras, caminos, planos inclinados, explanadas y lámina de agua se mezclan geométricamente, construyendo un nuevo lugar urbano y paisajístico de gran riqueza.

Housing the Basque Country presents the results of the Basque Government’s Housing Policy from 1981, when competences in housing were transferred to the Region, to the present day. The exhibition aims to succinctly and harmoniously present the various narratives hinging around public housing given that this area is undoubtedly one of those that encompasses the greatest array of social issues, from politics to architecture, from economics to production, from sociology to history and legal affairs. It naturally places those living in these homes at its center. Certainly, as it affects not only the way we understand homes, but also the way homes are obtained and produced, the way cities are generated, and, in short, the way in which wealth, progress and well-being are generated, public housing condenses society’s most important issues.

The exhibition includes thirty designs illustrating the development of public housing during the 1981-2018 period. The designs were chosen based on criteria such as design date, geographical distribution, location in both capital cities and small towns, architects and technical experts involved, type of development, the interest in terms of the typology and urban development, aesthetics, construction and sociology.

In parallel, the exhibition includes photography aiming to portray the social dimension and urban environment in the housing selected. Through photographs in different formats, the aim is to understand the urban activity that the designs on exhibit configure. Its spirit focuses on a realistic narration of the lives rooted in this type of residential settings.

Housing the Basque Country presents the results of the Basque Government’s Housing Policy from 1981, when competences in housing were transferred to the Region, to the present day. The exhibition aims to succinctly and harmoniously present the various narratives hinging around public housing given that this area is undoubtedly one of those that encompasses the greatest array of social issues, from politics to architecture, from economics to production, from sociology to history and legal affairs. It naturally places those living in these homes at its center. Certainly, as it affects not only the way we understand homes, but also the way homes are obtained and produced, the way cities are generated, and, in short, the way in which wealth, progress and well-being are generated, public housing condenses society’s most important issues.

The exhibition includes thirty designs illustrating the development of public housing during the 1981-2018 period. The designs were chosen based on criteria such as design date, geographical distribution, location in both capital cities and small towns, architects and technical experts involved, type of development, the interest in terms of the typology and urban development, aesthetics, construction and sociology.

In parallel, the exhibition includes photography aiming to portray the social dimension and urban environment in the housing selected. Through photographs in different formats, the aim is to understand the urban activity that the designs on exhibit configure. Its spirit focuses on a realistic narration of the lives rooted in this type of residential settings.

Housing the Basque Country presents the results of the Basque Government’s Housing Policy from 1981, when competences in housing were transferred to the Region, to the present day. The exhibition aims to succinctly and harmoniously present the various narratives hinging around public housing given that this area is undoubtedly one of those that encompasses the greatest array of social issues, from politics to architecture, from economics to production, from sociology to history and legal affairs. It naturally places those living in these homes at its center. Certainly, as it affects not only the way we understand homes, but also the way homes are obtained and produced, the way cities are generated, and, in short, the way in which wealth, progress and well-being are generated, public housing condenses society’s most important issues.

The exhibition includes thirty designs illustrating the development of public housing during the 1981-2018 period. The designs were chosen based on criteria such as design date, geographical distribution, location in both capital cities and small towns, architects and technical experts involved, type of development, the interest in terms of the typology and urban development, aesthetics, construction and sociology.

In parallel, the exhibition includes photography aiming to portray the social dimension and urban environment in the housing selected. Through photographs in different formats, the aim is to understand the urban activity that the designs on exhibit configure. Its spirit focuses on a realistic narration of the lives rooted in this type of residential settings.

Finally, the exhibition uses a conceptual construction to recreate both basic and the abstract elements of contemporary domestic spaces, that is, both the container and content in tangible and intangible terms, such as privacy and comfort.

ASSIDO es una entidad sin ánimo de lucro creada en 1981 en la Región de Murcia. Su fin es mejorar la calidad de vida de las personas con Síndrome de Down y sus familias, facilitándoles una vida lo más normalizada posible. Bajo esta consideración, el nuevo edificio residencial Ressido se ha determinado a partir de la accesibilidad -cognitiva y universal-, comodidad, facilidad de uso y potenciamiento de las capacidades individuales de sus usuarios.

En consecuencia, el argumento arquitectónico se desarrolla a partir de la construcción de un sencillo volumen rodeado de vegetación y tapiales, con el propósito de crear un pequeño universo aislado de un entorno insubstancial pero enlazado con otras riquezas locales como el clima murciano y su naturaleza. Tras los muros se levanta un cuerpo compacto que se posiciona centralmente dentro de esta nueva estancia ajardinada, creándose dos patios abiertos -uno público y otro de carácter más privado- en torno a los que se organiza el complejo. En el edificio los espacios se articulan respecto a un gran vacío iluminado cenitalmente, configurándolo como un continente en el que el movimiento y la presencia de todos los usuarios es el auténtico contenido y protagonista. De hecho, es la principal estrategia arquitectónica para activar la accesibilidad cognitiva: es en este interior, en el corazón mismo del edificio, donde la arquitectura se proporciona obvia y sencilla, comprensible en su práctica totalidad y ampliamente inteligible.

Todo proyecto, independientemente de su escala, debe gobernarse por una idea. Un concepto a partir del cual establecer una identidad propia y original, una literalidad que unifique su génesis y explique su materialización. Según este principio, la Sala de Alcaldes del Ayuntamiento de Bilbao trata de conseguir un nuevo espacio que acompañe y amplifique el contenido expuesto, los retratos de los sucesivos alcaldes de la Villa. El reto ha consistido en la transformación de un pequeño local de cien metros cuadrados en una sala noble, materialmente caracterizada, perceptiblemente más amplia y convenientemente relacionada con el resto del edificio en el que se inserta.

La intervención se basa en la instalación de un suelo de mármol negro de Marquina, un techo falso de lamas de madera, el trasdosado y pintado de las paredes existentes y el diseño de un mobiliario acorde con las necesidades presentes y futuras de la exposición: un sistema de paneles exentos y mesas de acero que permite la adaptación de las necesidades variables del contenido en conjunción con las características geométricas y dimensionales del espacio. Se ha considerado de especial importancia la correcta iluminación de cada uno de los elementos expuestos –cuadros, objetos y paneles–, para lo cual se ha proyectado un sistema de carriles electrificados oculto entre las lamas en el que se instalan focos según conveniencia. Al mismo tiempo, la manifestación de la sala hacia el espacio de acceso –vestíbulo del Edificio Consistorial– se confía a la construcción de dos puertas –entrada y salida– y un tercer elemento expositor, todos ellos ejecutados con marcos de acero laminado de marcada presencia y coherentes con el contexto arquitectónico.

El resultado conceptual es un lugar de elegante apariencia y cierto ambiente onírico, en el que destacan los cuadros y el vacío no sólo por su presencia sino por la réplica conseguida con las imágenes reflejadas en el suelo, la intensidad de la luz y el carácter noble de los materiales empleados, piedra, madera y acero. Tres materiales presentes a lo largo de toda la historia de Bilbao.

Con Sebastinao Provenzano

Brunico sugiere una vida tranquila ligada a la naturaleza y a los deportes de hielo. La escala de la ciudad y la baja densidad de sus extensiones conforman un contexto arquitectónico y paisajístico de alto valor para sus habitantes, estrechamente vinculados a los elementos naturales.

El área para la futura construcción del nuevo Complejo de Deportes sobre Hielo “Arena Brunico/Val Pusteria” no es una excepción, porque se sitúa en el límite de la ciudad y próximo a edificios públicos, extensos campos de cultivo, bosques de grandes árboles y vistas hacia las montañas que rodean el valle. Estas condiciones contextuales y funcionales demandan una nueva identidad física y un nuevo icono arquitectónico para Brunico y su tradición deportiva.

Nuestra estrategia propone un edificio singular integrado en este entorno natural a la vez que consciente de su ubicación en el límite urbano. Sobre una plataforma que construye el lugar inmediato se deposita una cubierta que se manifiesta como un objeto abstracto.

Esta idea sirve para separar las dos grandes pistas de hielo alojándolas en una plataforma de baja altura, manifestando únicamente la principal y ocultando la pista de entrenamiento. Se crea un nuevo plano horizontal que sirve para organizar los complejos flujos de usuarios y dos grandes espacios interiores relacionados con el bosque y el acceso, a la vez que sostiene material y conceptualmente la gran cobertura del Arena.

Bilbao has a continuous ring of districts that surround the more touristic and showy center, many with evident needs for architectural intervention. Matiko is one of them. In this district the city has been provided of a disused industrial building to be converted into an entrepreneurship center, based on a model that uses the recovery of old buildings to revitalize the place where they are located.

The most significant aspect of the project was the idea to design a façade that made the whole operation visible, with minimum cost and maximum expressivity. The proposal is a uniform skin that covers the exterior structure to create a taut plane at a large scale. The material chosen for this façade is commonly used for mechanical installations, but here it is conferred with an aesthetic virtue: galvanized steel cable trays. Behinds this surface the old parapet and windows are replaced with new ones that infill the structural framework, increasing the amount of daylight. The result is a surprising and elegant metallic curtain: more with less with cable trays.

Plot 501: The proposal offers, at the same time, a singular architecture according to its specific place and the maximun number of houses permitted by urban regulations. The corner of the new building takes into account its singular condition as entrance to the village, so that it is designed as an abstract composition of planes and voids. A part of the south roof is removed to get a sundeck terrace with nice views. The ground floor plan houses commercial and common areas as well as the concierge's house, all arranged around a central covered space. Additionally, the user may enjoy a cozy landscaped area at the exterior away from the highway's noise.

Plot 575: The main conditions of the place are topography, landscape value, and its relationship to Epalinges and the close social-medical building. These circumstances and the required program determine the proposal. Four similar blocks, with nine apartments each one, are adapted to the hillside and the scale of the nearby buildings. The study and the repetition of a unique block allows to understand the project and its relationship to the surroundings, as well as its capacity to address the functional program and its construction in various phases.

Cossonay is a small village were life is quiet and related to nature. Its scale and its low density configure a valuable architectonic and landscaping context for its inhabitants. The Chavannes area is not an exception so we propose a group of small school and sport buildings embedded in this context. The idea separates the program in three minor scale buildings which, however, maintain the same identity. The School with gymnasium, the nursery with the refectory and children's play centre, and the swimmingpool are separated in three volumes in order to form a low density group inserted in the natural surroundings without a great visual impact. The school and the nursery are joined with an elevated bridge and the swimmingpool is endowed with a canopy to access from parking to school. A big area has been reserved in the southeast part of the plot for playground.

Proximity relationships between three volumes conform a public space with the same importance than the rest of the project. Because of this square is well-oriented, protected against northwest winds, not only serves to access all buildings and cross the plot, but also for public meetings and other activities.

Designing educational spaces for children means understanding little worlds based on flexible rooms where furniture and diverse objects create imaginative situations. Large rooms or typical schemes with fixed classrooms and hallways must be avoided to fulfill our purpose. Therefore, a system of interior and exterior spaces and playgrounds appropriate for creativeness and learning is proposed.

The construction is required to be done in two phases, so the proposal divides the program in two independent volumes separated by a playground. Both buildings are designed with the same constructive module –five meters wide– the same functional scheme for classrooms and polyvalent spaces. Basic geometry is used as formal strategy.

The roof of most spaces –classrooms and polyvalent spaces- is solved with a prefabricated solution. An oblique cone, proposed to illuminate inner spaces, generates a singular deck with playful appearance and gives the space below a kindly form.

Located in the historic city center, the Plaza del Grano is the last great urban space in León that survives with all the physical singularities of the ancient city. Its most important values such us the stone pavement and the two ancient poplars must be preserved, restored and reconciled with the needs of the contemporary city. Therefore the aim of the proposal is not the replacement of these elements but its functional and aesthetical update.

The most significant intervention is the limitation of an area inside the old pavement in order to give the plaza the required accessibility. Trying not to impact so much, the new pavement is limited to the functional perimeter, allowing pedestrian access from and towards the square.

The proposal is completed with new urban furniture and trees. Among the furniture, the most relevant is a simple pavilion offered to restaurants and bars to place their chairs and tables in summer time. It is made out of wood and glass in order to minimize its presence.

The planning for Sector SSUNC 33 in Ponferrada (León) has been designed taking into account the existing context, traffic and pedestrian fluxes, commercial and housing densities and the potentiality of the area as a new activity centre for the city. The project arranges new buildings in the southern part, creating a big surface with gardens and a plaza. Five towers above a commercial basement shape this public space.

The towers are pure prisms which give singularity to the intervention and connect functional and formally the new sector with the rest of the city. The towers host different uses, such as housing, apart hotels, hotels and offices. In the northern limit, a garden surface and with lush trees is proposed. Both, towers and gardens, configure an urban space –70 meters wide and 300 meters long– linked to the proposed uses.

The project for the Plaza Mayor offers the opportunity to study its history to recover and update its most important values. It is not a simple restoration, but a contemporary reinterpretation in order to give new uses, new image and an efficient materiality to the Plaza. The project reinforces its horizontal condition and the existing materials, and introduces green areas and a canopy with plants in the perimeter. An underground parking completes the intervention.

The geometry arranges the existing traces, the pedestrian transits and also the flows that come into the square. All these invisible lines define a strategic diagram which serves as basis to set up different surfaces.

The severe weather in Medina points out the need of protection against rain and sun. The historical porches which surround the Plaza Mayor are the clever architectural answer to this necessity, remaining effective through decades. The project reinterprets the old porches in the form of a wood canopy of twelve meters width. All public functions such us children playgrounds, bar terraces, toilets, parking exits and green areas are located under this new element.

Located in a business park with access to good transportation infrastructures, very close to the beltway and the new entry to the city through the north, the Sacred Art Business Park is an initiative of the Seville City Council, which wanted to address the needs of a deeply rooted professional field in the Andalusian capital, that of religious crafts. This sector demanded space to develop its activities and stimulate the modernization processes of its companies, improve its production facilities and its work environment.

The Sacred Art Business Park draws inspiration from the traditional Mediterranean souk to recreate the private atmosphere of the old quarters where crafts people, grouped into different trades, manufactured and sold their products. It is a complex of nine buildings whose combination creates an urban and public space formed by streets perpendicular to one another. The street intersections generate two plazas of different sizes, with orange trees as only decorative element, which can be used for public markets or as resting area for artisans. At each end of the main road there is an arrival area for visitors and a building for complementary uses. Each building has a variable number of workshops that are conceived as flexible production spaces, built with surfaces illuminated in accordance with their potential use. The production spaces are located behind a continuous enclosure built with a lattice of white concrete prefabricated pieces, modulated following a five-meter grid, and adaptable to each specific need.

The Sacred Art Business Park is completed with a building for social and public interest services, PEASS Building, which covers the demand for exhibition, training, entertainment and interaction among the different trades, as well as the administration offices. Similar on the outside to the rest of the buildings of the complex, its monumental lobby, a cubic space clad with Macael marble, is linked by its position to the main street of the park. Both elements face one another in such a way that the lobby is conceived as an extension or as the end of the route that begins on the opposite end of the business park were a fifty-meter canopy marks the access to the new production spaces of the Sevillian artisans

The transition from cave dwelling to the primitive cabin, during the Mousterian period more than 40,000 years ago, marked the historic origin of Architecture. Taking this event as its reference point, the Neanderthal Center of Piloña aims to be the constructed expression or the architectural representation of that very transcendent moment for Humanity, and not merely a container for contents. The proposed architecture presents itself, therefore, as the synthesis of two ways of understanding construction: a tectonic shell, as if it were a textile cover –a hut–; but materialized with concrete in an effort to achieve a stereotomic or telluric appearance –a cave–. Therefore, the Neanderthal Center aspires to be the very recreation of the inhabited underground space and the primitive hut.

The geometry of the site and the natural surroundings give form to the previous idea. The morphological outcome is a building whose program is primarily below ground level and manifests itself to the exterior as a large rock formed by slanted triangular planes. Multiple imaginative resonances appear: the building not only reflects the concept of cave beneath the mountain, but also a large stone tool made of flint, or the distant but present outline of the Cantabrian Mountains, visible from the place and surroundings.

The programmatic arrangement is versatile and qualifies the cave’s spaces for the uses required by the museum project and complementary necessities. Following a descending entrance, one crosses the threshold of the Center to enter the welcome area. This lobby separates the building into two clearly defined areas. The exhibition area is on the right beneath a multifaceted vault, divided into two rooms for permanent and temporary collections. While both rooms operate independently, at any given time they can join to better accommodate staging or additional exhibits. The remaining utility rooms are located to the left of the lobby.

With Sebastiano Provenzano

Coastal landscape is one of Sardinia’s most valuable natural heritages. Its cliffs, trails, dunes and more than three hundred beaches and coves provide a natural setting that has historically given the Mediterranean island its own unique identity. From this point of view, the proposal for new facilities at Pistis Beach –located in the Comune de Arbus– aims for a singular construction that complements functionality and enriches visually the coastal surrounding without impinging on its high natural values.

The objective of this proposal is to offer a single structure to serve indistinctly any of the beaches’ activities. The solution is a simple pavilion with two lateral walls and a roof made of the same material. Besides functional versatility, this model is based on several prerequisites: unity in form, in an attempt to avoid proliferation of different facilities on the same beach; ease of assembly, transport and storage; and possibility of prefabrication and reproducibility, reducing as much as possible in situ construction and workshop costs. Arrive and assemble: plug-in.

We consider that manufacturing the object in two stages –pre-manufacturing or industrialization phase and the assembly and settlement in nature phase– confers the same a mobile quality that translates into position versatility. This way, its possibilities for inserting the same in the landscape and its possibilities of combination and aggregation are infinite, proposing sets of two, three and up to four pieces as a way to condense uses and form unique areas of activity within each beach.

We were asked to suggest criteria for the restoration of a historic architectural site in order to recover a building from its functional obsolescence and provide it with a new use for the public. Based on this premise, the Old Palacio de la Diputación is transformed to literally express the idea of a sustained dialogue between the historic and the contemporary; a new building within the existing one that becomes a setting for conciliation, social exchange and cultural exhibits.

In order to achieve this, the least valuable part, an addition built in the 60’s, was replaced with a new interior vacant space. A new entrance took the place of the old office complex, with a geometry that allows for a rational floor plan. This operation has generated a series of dualities between the old and the new elements, which substantially enrich the reading and experience of the building. Namely: a second interior volume of similar dimensions to the old patio, which remains covered with skylights; a second staircase of monumental character to reach the first and second floors; a second entrance into the building from the Alfonso XII street, which solves the present lack of accessibility. Three new elements –void, staircase and entrance– combine into one unit for restoration purposes, distributing the spaces for work, offices and a conference room on the new lower level accessible from the Alfonso XII street. The rest of the program requested for the ground floor –temporary exhibits, reading and consultation and reception– is distributed throughout the various rooms that remain intact.

In the area of the Palace being preserved the restoration seeks to introduce a certain unity and simplification of its most important pieces: patio, staircase and rooms. The floor of the patio is raised to the level of the ground floor and its windows become doors. Only the flooring is treated in the remaining rooms and staircase and a dividing corridor between the Palace and the new restoration fulfills the functional modernization of both floors of the building by housing new rest rooms, elevator and support rooms.

The extension of the Central Park of Santurce raises the question of how to handle very central urban spaces faced with natural limits as evocative as the coast. On this point it’s necessary to remember that, during the last century, the city faced the insurmountable physical barrier of a railway and a highway which inhibited it from its legitimate growth toward the Port. Its neuralgic center was physically divided –even though not visually– in two large sections that worked uncomfortably separated. Park, Promenade and Port comprise, in fact, an architectural, scenic and social unit waiting to be put together.

Functionality of the project is therefore of primary concern, just as sensitivity to location and climate, interaction among residents and the capacity of the design to generate new, attractive leisure and tourist activities are driving forces of the proposal. Consequently, and taking into consideration the location and its history, the project reinterprets the strong horizontal condition of the area in question uniting it materially, enriching it with an extensive landscaping –one hundred meters long and thirty-six wide– and equipping it with particular horizontal buildings designated for community leisure and tourist promotion.

Due to the new underground parking, planting of large trees is limited to the perimeter, a limitation which can be used to advantage as it offers an unhindered area suitable for sports and large assemblies. This choice of a versatile and flexible design of a grassy turf is compatible with any type of urban activity, ultimately a great green surface both visually pleasing and functional. Beyond the present line of the railway a new paved surface continues that, through the use of materials associated with the surroundings such as wood and stone (granite and concrete), achieves a unified horizontal plane with a single dimensional criteria. Creosote treated wood, used on the decks and hulls of boats, is used for the pedestrian areas located beneath the two proposed buildings. Granite and concrete are used in the proximities of the port and shipyards.

Within the physical framework of the enlargement of the city of Bilbao, the planning of the Garellano area means operating within one of its most important boundaries: the west. Accordingly, the proposal takes advantage of the strong geometric condition of the 19th century block by extending it to the relevant scope. The streets’ layout is naturally extended to end up adapting the urban grid to blocks of a size that is more appropriate for the new requirements and concurring scales. So, the side of the already existing grid (100 m.) is reduced to forty meters.

After defining such order, the applicable area is unified to generate a large plot where traffic takes second place. The result is a landscaped area (140 m. wide by 180 m. long) containing the new blocks, as well as a framework of pedestrian passages and restricted traffic roads. Considering the small density of green areas within Bilbao’s enlargement, the opportunity is taken to offer the city a unique garden –of the greatest extension– equipped with some amenities as well as a forest of autochthonous trees. Ultimately, a Central Park, a meeting place, and a part of nature that is useful not only for residents, but also for all citizens.

The single block is circumscribed to a square of a dimension that allows to subdivide it into three thirteen meters wide sections, a suitable dimension for residential units of double or single orientation. The result is three-body block, a lower one with a square floor plan, in the form of a commercial boulevard; and two higher ones of variable height (three, twelve or twenty-five floors). This unit may be used as constitutive principle, given that it may be repeated and adapted to the sun light, the satisfaction of the residential program and the visual configuration of the city. Four towers of twenty-five floors are built on each of the plot’s corners, while the lower buildings or the lower facades of the higher buildings are looking towards the inside of the park. The first decision serves to limit the perception of the relevant area and offer an urban milestone that is visible from a distance. And the second one solves a difficult equation that includes the variables of great density, public spaces with sunlight and human scale public areas.

The importance exerted by early twentieth century industrial architecture on city configuration is well documented. Large, austere buildings were constructed, almost always sporadically, along the outskirts of the large cities. Linked by roads, those simple and considerable volumes constituted hermetic boxes whose interiors enclosed frenetic activity, only apparent in the encounters with the exterior. At present, when many of these productive structures have been forgotten or abandoned, the need to recycle them into the urban collective is more imperative than ever. Quoting Lewis Mumford, it is time for the city “to convert power into form, energy into culture and dead matter into the living symbols of art”.

The outline of the Visual Culture Center is that of a great interior space within an utterly urban object, the result of visual and sculptural staging exercise. An empty space treated as a street-theater, open to the outside and a sequence of planes and stairs to the rest of the building, whose mission is not only functional organization but, ultimately, to represent the culture of the visual. The principal change in the existing building is to substitute one of the interior bodies with another one whose geometry allows a substantially rational floor plan. This operation takes the shape of four patios or large interior spaces of identical size connecting directly to the street or empty interior as extensions.

The present roof of the building is replaced by a larger entity that increases the existing useful space and accommodates the more limited uses. The fundamental purpose of this second stage is to make the city aware of the recovery of the Tobacco Factory in a simple but visible way, not at all traumatic but instead delicate, careful and subtle. The perception of this new upper volume has been considered from both the pedestrian and higher levels, since it deals with a surface treated as a canvas whose manifestation directly refers to industrial images.

The purpose of the project is to develop a group of houses within a private development whose main value is the natural setting. Located in Ventades, a village in the Valle de Mena, the project consists of twenty single units whose distribution logics seek to create green areas for collective recreation, vehicle and pedestrian accesses, and areas for expansion for each single home. The result is a volumetric whole with balanced and proportioned open spaces, capable of maintaining the equilibrium between nature and houses intact and appropriate for community living.

Regarding typology, the house model used revolves around an open patio that separates it from the immediate surroundings with a movable screen. The living room, kitchen and family room as well as the master suite embrace three sides of the patio providing depth and amplitude to the house. So, the courtyard is conceived as another living space, of similar size to the rest of the rooms, becoming the best area in the house and unifying all its spaces. Almost a century later, this typology links up with the research carried out by architects such as Hilberseimer, Mies or Utzon regarding houses with a courtyard in residential developments. Those architects sought to provide homes with a portion of nature by opening a space to the exterior representing a personal dialogue of the individual with the universe.

The building’s argument is developed under the restrictions of specific urban planning and based on principles of order, austerity and efficiency. A flexible system of spaces is proposed, capable of accommodating researchers, entrepreneurs or students, and organized schematically on the basis of different areas under a continuous skin and around three interior light patios. The environmental quality for work is achieved through two free plans, modulated and divisible into spaces for laboratories, spin-offs or classrooms. Thus the distribution is released from any wall restrictions, since the space may be fractioned according to the specific needs.

The ground floor houses the more public uses, following the universal norm of all university campus buildings. Therefore the lobby, cafeteria and auditorium are readily accessible from the outside, both for the building’s occupants and for professors and students. The building comes across as a simple box whose uniform expression contributes to its singularity. Avoiding any compulsion to play with windows, the continuous glass facade is used to achieve the Miracle Box of Le Corbusier. By doing this, the volume is conceived as an object sitting on the ground with abstract indifference. And in the detail, the glass is folded in its outer layer to achieve effects like those sought by Mies in his tall buildings, where the importance of reflections in the glass surfaces prevailed over the effects of light and shadow typical of normal buildings. All in all, the folded facade introduces the quality of changing density, brought about by the angle of visual perception and the different illuminations.

The proposal can be understood as the search for a symbol. A built symbol whose presence, both inside and out, evokes the importance of an urban-functional complex as unique in kind as the Campus it is part of. Apart from providing maximum efficiency to the occupants of the building, the goal is, ultimately, to achieve a monumental, immemorial, and representative building. Consequently, the proposal is an architecture articulated around a totally vacant space resulting from a sculptural exercise. A readily accessible building-lobby treated as one excavated from a body whose mission is to explain, metaphorically, the democratic values the Campus represents.

On this foundation, the cylinder takes over as the enveloping geometric form and orthogonality is adopted as the canonical strategy for the configuration of the project. The different spaces which accommodate the multiple functions of the building and its complex traffic patterns are joined to greater or lesser degree around the central void. The working strategy has generated an “interior ring” of a square floor plan which articulates all the vertical and horizontal communications as well as the patios, floor nodes and restrooms. The auditorium is on the first floor, as well as the all-purpose rooms, all of them equipped with representative entries through a staircase which remembers mechanisms of buildings such as the Garnier Opera or theatrical sets like those of Adolphe Appia.

The exterior material treatment, two enveloping glass structures –transparent and translucent–, eliminates any scalar reference and constitutes a mysterious changing surface that insinuates the internal activity of the building, giving a duality of transparency-opaqueness to the skin and helping to underscore its figurative and consciously disoriented condition.

Louis I. Kahn defined the city as an assembly of institutions. The North American architect believed that the different human establishments were implicit in its nature. And whether private or public, the dialogue between the architecture which houses them results in public spaces, those places where humans meet. Inspired by Kahn, the project for the revitalization of this part of the city is considered from the necessary reinterpretation of its urban surroundings. We begin with the understanding that the implementation of a complex with such ample and heterogeneous activities as proposed should influence in all possible ways the city which awaits it. Consequently –recovering the essence of the radical lines of Castilian squares– the Auditorium and New Square are placed around a pure geometric public space. The result is a new meeting place within the historic district of Soria, a space that completes the system of squares including San Clemente, San Esteban, San Blas and Plaza Mayor, among others. The plaza accommodates urban encounter and serves as a public entrance lobby to the surrounding buildings: the auditorium, the extension of the Cultural Center, a hotel, a building for the Castilla and Leon Government and local businesses.

The project intends to topographically arrange the unstructured surrounding area by building one of the borders of the historic city, and connecting it with the aspiration for its physical and tactile regularization. Architecture makes the city, because urban space has the high potential to be transformed into new centers of activity, in an effort to rebuild it both functionally and formally. The public stage represents, after all, the social uses that give it meaning.

The Office Building for the Principality of Asturias in Gijón is proposed from the possibility of providing a new public space for the city. A square inserted in an urban fabric through a single gesture, with a small non-residential structure and landscaped forest bordered by a wall of offices. Ultimately, a natural refuge, a meeting place, and a place of work disconnected from the excessive urban dynamics.

The configuration of a space with these volumetric characteristics requires careful reflection about its borders. These should, insofar as possible, merge with the surrounding city, be permeable to public and employees, as well as representative of the institution they house. The opportunity to build in such a unique location on Constitution Avenue inspires a response of equal enthusiasm with two substantial gestures: on the one hand, through a vertical volume which catches the eye from the long distance perspective of the Avenue it comes out to; and on the other hand, locating the access to the new garden and the buildings bordering it at the vertex where it meets the same. Gate and threshold become univocal and explanatory gestures of the intervention.

Regarding materiality, a facade that comes from the formal memory of the surroundings is proposed, creating a unified esthetic. In keeping with the coastal architecture of Northern Spain, a typical solution of a glass enclosed balcony will be adopted to build a glass enclosure of the garden-square. Its arrangement is determined with a language absent of irregular gestures and signs conceived outside the laws dictated by urban form. The choice then is to express the structural order, which is manifested on the exterior through a modulated skin. The result of all this is a perceptive envelopment –regulated, even, ruled–, a panoptic space, uncontaminated by extravagant forms or ordinary solutions. A continuous skin whose glass surfaces will cause, thanks to their specular effects, a volumetric expansion, providing a kaleidoscope effect that will dissolve the constructed limits.

With Sebastiano Provenzano

The main purpose of the project is to create a new large landscaped area in this neighborhood of Catania. To that end, piazza Michelangelo is used as the centre of an empty complex that is actually formed by three successive public areas: the gardens of the viale Rafaelo Sanzio, the piazza Michelangelo itself and the gardens of villa Scammacca, which are now incorporated into the city’s park system. The project explores the strategy of linking. The three areas are connected diagonally through a pedestrian walkway that goes through the piazza, linked by an attractive green system, large enough to become a new place to rest.

The Michelangelo piazza is offered as both a place to pass through and to meet. A place to pass through because it gives the citizen free mobility. A place to stay because each of its four sides, although different, invites people to stay one way or another. An already existing commercial gallery, a new pavilion with different uses; a garden strip on the south side and a large forest of magnolia trees invite the passers-by to stop, lose themselves and evade from the surrounding city.

In sum, an operation based on light and economical interventions is proposed. It is based, more than on large urban gestures on hidden architectural presences, reading the immediate context and using the capacities that surround the place, such as the villa Scammacca, the Rafael Sanzio street gardens or the existing commercial gallery.

The Motor Museum in Alcalá de Henares is based on two considerations of different nature: the creation of an important urban culture and leisure center and the remodeling and revitalization of an unused industrial building, the Gal factory.

The influence of early twentieth century industrial architecture on the axioms of the Modern Movement is obvious. Masters such as Gropius, Le Corbusier or Behrens expressed their devotion to the expressive strength of factories, for the abstract forms spontaneously produced by the engineers in order to meet the needs of industrial architecture. Nowadays, when that admiration has been replaced by the decadence of industrial ruins and exile of their aesthetic value, it is essential to understand the keys which made those factories one of the seeds of modern architecture. Looked at from this perspective, the project seeks to adapt the volumetric and spatial conditions of the old factory to accommodate the multiple needs at hand and restore its architectural essence.

The major decision consists of building a single floor volume, a platform-prelude with a horizontal component which changes the perception of the factory, transforming it into an object on a base. This procedure serves to increase the necessary functional area and clearly distinguish functional areas from exhibition ones, as well as to give the public an unencumbered and elevated ground plan. With the communication between platform and ground plan solved through comfortable ramps, references to the Mayan constructions which exercised such influence on the master Jørn Utzon appear.

With Sebastiano Provenzano

The Spoleto Roman Theatre belongs to the category of unique spaces that have been forgotten by the city. Its condition as decadent ruins of museum value is only overcome by the sporadic use of the same for scenic arts, when the historic walls and buildings that hide the same open its doors to the public. Under this circumstance, the intention of “acting architecturally” allows for recovering the unused space as a meeting place in the city. Uniting, separating, going round and listening have been the conceptual materials for the project: to confirm the central nature of the theatre’s structure and consider the theatre as a representation of the city and the people who live in.

The Spoleto Roman Theatre belongs to the category of unique spaces that have been forgotten by the city. Its condition as decadent ruins of museum value is only overcome by the sporadic use of the same for scenic arts, when the historic walls and buildings that hide the same open its doors to the public. Under this circumstance, the intention of “acting architecturally” allows for recovering the unused space as a meeting place in the city. Uniting, separating, going round and listening have been the conceptual materials for the project: to confirm the central nature of the theatre’s structure and consider the theatre as a representation of the city and the people who live in.

The project intends to establish new relationships between the theatre and the city, between the museum that exhibits the same and the surrounding area. Attention has been paid to the complex operation of the theatre as a result of its threefold nature, given that it is a space for performances, a monument that can be visited and a place open to public use. For such purpose, the inherent potential of the context has been included to ensure that no conflicts arise between the different functions.

The first step eliminates the wall that separates the Theatre from the Piazza de la Libertá, which was an impediment to the enjoyment of the view. A transparent pavilion takes its place, ensuring a renewed visual relationship with the theatre and used for information, ticket offices, bookshop and balcony from which the monument can be enjoyed. The second step defines a new limit and entrance door from the Vía delle Terme, generating an access through the front part of the terraces through a second pavilion that contains a cafeteria and reception area, as well as a garden that transforms the back part of this space into another one used for leisure and resting. And the third step is proposed for the performance area. A new stage, materially ephemeral, is projected, conceived to facilitate assembly and disassembly and characterized by its lightness. The set is simply entrusted to the existing architecture, veiled only by a translucent lattice that unifies in some way the historic volumetry.

Located in the heart of the Chueca district, the Pías de San Antón Schools form a large aedile complex within the bounds of the historic city. Considering the lack of large public spaces, intervention in the new headquarters of the Madrid Institute of Architects offers an opportunity to rectify this defect: the project is conceived with the clear form of a plaza –or a void carved out of a dense material–, that in addition is crossed tangentially by a street connecting Hortaleza with Santa Brígida. The impact is substantial: the square and street offer a new cross path along Chueca which connects the Plaza de San Ildefonso with Recoletos, a new urban route whose geographic center is the new headquarters.

The COAM Plaza is an empty space which reconstructs and brings up to date the site, establishing a balanced dialogue between buildings and city where the occupied bears a direct relation with the unoccupied. Among its main functions are to provide a venue for social contact and to organize a public access lobby to each building of the complex: the Madrid Institute of Architects, the Center for Architecture Documentation, the Municipal Library, the Senior Center, the Daycare Center, the Kindergarten and the Sports Facilities. It is the public area which expands and widens in certain points, stretching itself to the extent possible into the different lobbies.

The ultimate goal is to enrich the character and secrets of the city’s labyrinth, to convert the public space into a place of collective identity. In reality, to bring back Battista Nolli and his vision of the eighteenth century through the Nuova Pianta di Roma as an innocent strategy, obvious but true.

The Sacred Art Business Park in Seville proposes a reinterpretation of an architecture trying to recall the intimate atmosphere in which artisans traditionally worked; a productive and commercial setting reminiscent of the zoco as an urban model typical of the Mediterranean. The project seeks to achieve an historical atmosphere similar to the atavistic district –grouping the spaces and different guilds– which modern city has not been able to preserve.

A configuration of volumes whose grouping comprises a urban fabric with its own identity is proposed. Each volume or building of this configuration is a flexible productive space, constructed out of multiple functional surfaces illuminated according its conceivable use. Each building has a first layer which accommodates the arrival and departure of materials, as well as entrance ways, offices, or individual display areas. Behind these are the real work spaces, diaphanous, properly modulated with five meter grids and adaptable to specific necessities. Inside each building and separating workshops are small patios that provide direct light as well as closets and storage for delicate materials.

The distribution of the buildings creates an urban setting formed by a grid of perpendicular streets. In the intersections two squares of different size are formed, intended for the convenience of the craftsman and the eventual organization of public markets. These two plazas are ornamented only and exclusively with the shade and scent of orange trees. To complete the park, there is a visitor landing center at each end of the main street, as well as an auxiliary building to provide complementary uses, entrance gates to the Sevillian showcase of Sacred Art.

El proyecto para el Centro de Educación en Biología Marina plantea la necesidad de reflexionar acerca de cómo actuar en un espacio natural sin fracturar su frágil equilibrio. ¿Qué hacer para que la arquitectura conforme el paisaje sin atentar contra él? ¿Cómo intervenir en un paraíso amenazado por la incursión de construcciones de escaso valor que nada tienen que ver con su entorno, cultura e historia?

La integración del proyecto en el paisaje ha sido prioritaria. Un entorno rural caracterizado por construcciones agrícolas o residenciales de pequeño volumen ha condicionado la escala de la propuesta, buscando una arquitectura subordinada a la belleza del lugar. Un edificio que se exprese como un elemento más del paisaje, como la tierra sobre la que se asienta y las montañas y el mar que le rodean.

La clara diferenciación del programa en residencial, docente y dotacional posibilita fragmentar la propuesta en tres unidades funcionales autónomas, minimizando la presencia y el volumen excesivo que supondría la concentración de todas las actividades en una única pieza. Este mecanismo consigue mejor adaptación de la arquitectura a la topografía, protección de los árboles existentes y asunción de las variaciones del terreno, así como singularizar el tratamiento de los distintos usos: un lugar para comer y estar, otro para descansar, y un nuevo espacio donde enseñar.

Tres pequeños edificios que acogen las instituciones sociales que definiera Kahn: encontrarse, aprender y descansar. Tres piezas que dejan pasar entre sí el prado de San Vicente y repiten en sus formas y cubiertas las leves inclinaciones del terreno. Piezas que se miran, se aproximan y se separan. Edificios pegados al suelo, adaptados a la topografía, relacionados entre sí, como marcos del Cantábrico y de la marina. Sencillamente, arquitectura y naturaleza que se alternan sin artificios en un lugar donde paisaje y cobijo acompañan al usuario constantemente.

Height above sea level of the Tormes River + 722.0: height of the river when it goes through Salamanca or starting point for the urban proposal for the planning of the river banks. The Salamanca skyline reflecting on the Tormes River is almost as recognizable as its majestic cathedral. History has allowed city and river to live necessarily united in such a way that preserving the natural beauty of its bank is as important as protecting and preserving its monuments without hindering their growth: the city and its geographical setting are an inseparable whole.

Starting from this positive protection assumption, the project is based on an analysis of the existing urban fabric and on identifying its most significant elements. It is organized in four strips that run parallel to the river: the fluvial park, which follows the banks up to the Roman Bridge; the cultural-non-residential section, where the largest buildings and public services are located; the park and the residential area. As one moves away from the river toward the consolidated city, density increases progressively. The arrangement of the four strips that run parallel to the riverbed provides a layering which generates an organic frieze of architectonic detail, treated as base for dialogue with the image of the old city.

The project explores the notion of urban form as an open structure, variable and adaptable to the changing needs of the generic city, but at the same time precise in its lay-out and spatial arrangement. To do so it avoids certain approaches of static and perceptive concepts of urban planning, which produce common venues of straight streets, impersonal blocks and public spaces, hard roadways and uncomfortable traffic circles.

The decision to use a structure on which certain basic elements are handled makes for a strategy of a variable and sufficiently flexible project that can adapt to the idiosyncrasies of the city. The most repeated element of the structure is the cloister. Multiple repetitive empty spaces perfectly defined by organic or architectural material: openings in the city that accommodate various uses, offering an up-to-date reinterpretation of the most unique places in historic Salamanca.

The construction of 211 subsidized houses in Ciudad Real offers the opportunity to reflect on residential intervention in the outskirts of the city. We start with the criticism that the present suburbs are built up without any defined order or sense, resulting in fragments with no particular ties to the area and fairly unsightly. In this regard, the solution offered here has tried to combine an exclusively residential design with a very specific urban setting, in an effort to provide an architectural antidote to the poison of vulgarity spread throughout the city fringes.

In order to do this, a setting with unique objects such as the Puerta de Toledo coexisting with aggressive infrastructures such as the Ronda de Toledo was observed. And, with the exception of a nearby playground, the rest is a vacuum devoid of any significance, conditioned by its location on the outskirts and contaminated by infrastructures and irrelevant architecture. Nevertheless, analysis of the remote reveals the existence of elements in layers –Manchegan landscape, hills and vantage points, the Guadiana River– that exercise a positive and coherent influence in the conception of the urban area and buildings which make up the proposal.

Drawing from these assumptions, the houses are designed as a set of blocks arranged following several principles. Ten buildings of similar size are placed on an easily understood plot with a green background to introduce nature. In this basic scheme each building adopts a height according to its relative position within the plot, thereby forming public patios of different condition. Thus, four towers respond to the territorial scale of the Ronda de Toledo, while three four story blocks looking to the interior form gardens of human scale. Simultaneously, the replicability of the arrangement allows it to be considered a strategy for colonization of the area, since consideration has been given to eventual disappearance of neighboring buildings and possible extension of the relevant pattern. Likewise, the fragmentation in various blocks lends great flexibility to development of the project, avoiding dependency on a single development.

A house: a palace. The famous Le Corbusier quote is the starting point for a project which endows the modest residence with privileges based not on material ostentation, but rather in conceptual architectural order. Starting with the idea to recapture the essence of traditional Mediterranean houses, a home built surrounding a nucleus or fragment of personalized nature is designed. This approach transforms the thirty-six houses into as many small palaces, each with a patio.

The home-patio is based on the combination of several square modules with five meter sides. Each module can fit two bedrooms with their respective bathrooms, a family-dining-kitchen unit, a small garden or a parking place. On this functional and volumetric basis, the modules make up different types of homes as if they were the pieces of a puzzle or tangram.

As in the traditional Mediterranean home, the relation between the exterior and the interior is enabled not through openings or windows, but rather through a patio. It is a place within the house that condenses all traffic, given that its different rooms, divided into private bedrooms and common areas, directly communicate through this space. This way, the patios separate physically but not virtually the interior from the exterior, as well as the different parts of the house. Additionally, thanks to this patio, each home becomes an hortus conclusus where each inhabitant can carry out numerous activities.

In the whole scale, a three-dimensional grid expandable to the entire plot is formed, which behaves independently with regard to the irregular outline. And as if it were a checkerboard, a dense a compact body is built, a complex neighborhood of houses that reproduces the magical interior spaces of the most evocative Mediterranean towns.

La transformación del antiguo edificio Telefónica de León en oficinas y viviendas se ha basado en el equilibrio entre la conservación de la historia y la innovación de la urbe.

En el contexto del centro urbano leonés el edificio aparece como un elemento significativo. Dada la densidad de los tránsitos peatonales y rodados de la zona, tanto el nuevo tratamiento interior como el exterior se conciben en relación a su descubrimiento visual. En consecuencia, y aceptando la sugerencia inicial de tratar cualquier volumen añadido al edificio con pureza y materialidad contenida, el proyecto propone una nueva y única alineación en cubierta para alojar en un prisma sencillo y vítreo el programa residencial requerido. La envolvente visible de este cuerpo se desplaza hacia el interior generando un cuerpo de oficinas independiente de los muros y medianeras existentes. El diálogo volumétrico queda establecido, a partir de esta solución, entre dos elementos puros y sencillos de diferente materialidad pero similar proporción.

Entre la caja nueva y los límites preexistentes, a medio camino entre el interior y el exterior, aparecen vacíos de considerable altura donde se organizan las circulaciones principales. Son los lugares más importantes del proyecto: los acotados por la medianera de Padre Isla y la caja nueva y los originados entre ésta y los muros del antiguo inmueble. En el primero la escalera de acceso a las oficinas generales y a las viviendas de cubierta se trata escultóricamente mientras que en el segundo el vacío se aprovecha como filtro divisor de la luz hacia las dos plantas superiores de oficinas. Estos interiores se traducen en ámbitos abundantemente iluminados donde las escaleras se encajan como desfiladeros y los huecos primitivos se tratan como pantallas de ampliación lumínica. El resto de espacios intersticiales se aprovecha para incluir usos secundarios de apoyo a las oficinas.

El proyecto para la Nueva Sede de las Juntas Generales de Guipúzcoa manifiesta la búsqueda de un símbolo. No sólo se propone un edificio útil sino la construcción, en última instancia, de un objeto representativo. Y si se entiende por símbolo la figuración de una realidad mediante rasgos socialmente aceptados, entonces la cuestión pasa por determinar las referencias más adecuadas, aquellos rasgos pertenecientes a la memoria colectiva válidos para emplearse como icono institucional.

Es patente la influencia de los artistas vascos en la arquitectura contemporánea de la segunda mitad del S. XX. Las investigaciones de Oteiza sobre la desocupación de la materia, su ansia por un espacio formativo del hombre y su intención de encontrar un vacío racional que provocara la intimidad social y política han sido determinantes en el pensamiento arquitectónico. Las poéticas luminosas, la profundidad del aire y la construcción de los límites elementales en la escultura de Chillida, también.

Las obras de estos dos maestros han actuado como metáforas en la configuración de las Juntas Generales. El edificio se propone como un rotundo objeto-homenaje cuyo interior ha sido el resultado de un ejercicio escultórico. Un cubo útil formado por la agregación de los cuerpos que albergan las diferentes dependencias de la Sede y que giran en torno a un centro luminoso y esculpido. Un único vacío interior tratado como el corazón excavado de una masa cuya misión es explicar la unidad territorial personificada en esta Institución.

La consideración objetual del edificio viene dada por su condición de abstracto elemento depositado en el paisaje. Sus proporciones enfatizan su naturaleza figurativa y conscientemente desubicada, al mismo tiempo que el tratamiento material exterior, una envolvente de vidrio transparente y translúcida, elimina cualquier referencia escalar y constituye una misteriosa piel cambiante que insinúa la actividad interna del edificio.

With Daniel Gimeno

The project is viewed as a house which surrounds a light and abstract void. The floor plan is built within a module with a ten meter facade and twelve meter depth, divided into three parallel bands: the closest to the facade accommodates the family oriented spaces and the interior tends to maximum personal intimacy, achieving interior-exterior and individual-collective relationships with oriental inspiration. The central band joins these distinct levels by means of a luminous patio and a functionally ambiguous space.

The most intimate part is housed in prefabricated and hermetic modules, which also integrate the structural system as well as the home’s main energy supplies. The rest of the space remains disconnected from specific functions thanks to its dimension and the lack of structural restrictions. The distribution possibilities are multiple and depend on their residents, suggesting that personal preferences determine the finished product.

The model has been conceived to lend itself to horizontal extension or reduction and to grow vertically. Its assemblage in height allows the presence of separate patios and periscopic voids of four levels which can be used for energy management. Longitudinally, the overall effect is that of a compact building where each residence is afforded its own patio, focal point and ultimate representation of private life.

El proyecto para la rehabilitación de la Plaza de Toros de Buenavista es una oportunidad ineludible para transformar un olvidado edificio en un nuevo centro dedicado a la cultura y a sus distintas expresiones. Frente a las ya habituales actuaciones que sobre edificios similares han proliferando por la geografía española, a base de artefactos constructivos de dudosa apariencia, se propone convertir la actual plaza de toros en un nuevo edificio multiusos estrechamente relacionado con las últimas y más importantes transformaciones de Oviedo.

La fiesta del toro se ha vinculado históricamente a lo popular y colectivo. Inicialmente el espectáculo acontece en las calles y las plazas de las ciudades y éste es acompañado de un gentío bullicioso y festivo. Poco a poco la ciudad asimila este hecho y pronto aprende a simultanear en su plaza los festejos taurinos con su vida cotidiana. Más tarde aparecen los primeros recintos exclusivamente construidos para la ocasión. Es este atávico espíritu de simultaneidad funcional el que quiere recuperarse para la nueva Plaza de Toros de Buenavista.

El programa propuesto pretende acondicionar el edificio existente con espacios capaces de albergar eventos culturales de diversa índole. Corridas de toros, conciertos, ferias, fiestas, exposiciones.... De modo que se dota a la plaza de espacios tales como salas de proyecciones y conferencias, salas de prensa, zona de exposiciones, cafeterías y aparcamientos. Un pequeño centro cultural, comercios y zonas administrativas completan el amplio programa estudiado.

El desarrollo programático sugiere claridad formal y racionalidad organizativa para posibilitar la flexibilidad funcional. Por esta razón la plaza y el ruedo se cubren con un sencillo prisma depositado sobre un zócalo masivo: la caja permite el uso continuo del espacio público y el zócalo alberga la infraestructura secundaria. Concebida como un objeto, la caja se posa en el suelo con indiferencia abstracta. Como instrumento geométrico actúa siendo marco de un tiempo físico e impreciso. Como instrumento de acotación, absorbe los accidentes, delimita el espacio y hace visibles las figuras en su interior. Todo ello con la mayor economía. Huyendo de aventuras formales complejas, se adopta la síntesis miesiana para su construcción.