OCULUM, the new reception of the Institute of Ocular Microsurgery of Madrid, seeks a link between the worlds of ophthalmology and architecture, which finds and unfolds its spatial narrative around optical devices, such as lenses, photometers, refractometers and microscopes.

OCULUM is designed as a visually technological space which processes, from the generation of the idea to its construction, are completely innovative and handcrafted, and made from a non-existent product on the market, manufactured by a metalworker in an industrial warehouse in the Madrid neighborhood of Tetuán.

OCULUM is a continuous system that consists of a 41,5 by 2.96 meters metallic ribbon that fits like a glove into the existing space. A continuous enclosure formed by 17 light boxes with a depth of 6 cm and a 4 mm opal white methacrylate in its interior, illuminated by wired and encapsulated led modules with optical lens; all of this, covered by 13 aluminum plates lacquered in a textured 9006 RAL with its front cut out by circular figures.

OCULUM is conceived as an architectural device: a large luminaire made up of 1184 lenses that emit a constant and homogeneous light that enlarges and magnifies the foyer, while enveloping, looking at and welcoming the visitor to the ophthalmological centre. Thanks to the reflections, refractions and backlight effects, the notions and limits between interior / exterior, public / private, and inside / outside, are altered in order to achieve a magical atmosphere in the place.

OCULUM is also a tribute to Jean Prouvé’s dream and his tenacious experimental search in the world of prefabrication, to classic Barbarella film by Roger Vadim, starring Jane Fonda under the circular spotlights of film studios and her space-age wardrobe created by Paco Rabanne, and to the fashion designer and architect himself and his best geometric designs, which also included circles.

Built work

Credits

Location Mirasierra, Madrid, Spain

Year 2020

Built area 100 m2

Client Grupo Miranza

Architecture gon (Gonzalo Pardo)

Team Carol Pierina Linares, María Cecilia Cordero, Iván Rando

Project manager Marta Sánchez Salas

Carpentry Ancordarq S.L.

Panels Rótulos Argoneón S.L.U.

Front desk Abalit Elementos Moldeados S.L.

Lighting Oliva iluminación

Photography Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)

Video Ismyshot (Ismael Arriola) + Andrés Álvarez

Published in

SIDERAL is the answer to the commission to recover an industrial building built at the end of the 20th century, in an industrial estate on the southern outskirts of Madrid, near Mostoles, and transform it into an office and warehouse for an advertising delivery company.

The spatial configuration of the building, which stands on a corner within the industrial urban tissue, was organized before the intervention on two levels, each one of them with numerous partitions joined, on the second floor, by a great opaque metallic roof that imposed the use of artificial light, situated at 9,63 meters above ground level.

In contrast to the idea of making the markedly industrial character of the building disappear, the intervention seeks to recycle the space and revalue it through the recovery of selected singular elements that have traditionally formed part of the industrial landscape, present both in the previous space and in the collective imagination of this type of building, such as the spatial amplitude, the type of flooring, the lighting system or the use of materials such as steel, and thus continue with an existing language that is at the same time inherent to this type of building.

In this way, the project, which seeks to meet the clients' desire for an open-plan workspace and a large storage system compatible with a symbolic and representative character of their company, reorganizes the building into two levels. While the ground floor houses the reception and the double-height warehouse, the upper floor houses the offices, the meeting room, and a rest area with a kitchen.

The decision-making process to obtain the result of the new building is as clear as it is precise and focuses on a series of actions:

emptying the space by eliminating false ceilings and partitions so that the original structure and volume of the building becomes visible. If the new vertical walls that divide the rooms are large floor-to-ceiling glass panels that generate an unprecedented transparency on the upper floor through a total side-to-side view of the offices, the replacement of the double frames of the façade windows with single-pane windows facilitates the introduction of the exterior nature into the interior.

reconfiguring the interior silhouette of the roof with a saw shape that gives a clearer and less monotonous pattern to the space. This new roof configuration, in addition to reinforcing the sequential character of the workplace, allows for a greater visual richness where the spatial compressions and dilations thanks to the peaks and ridges of the saw offer an architectural experience for both the everyday worker and the visitor.

drilling holes in the north facade in order to introduce a constant light, without luminous variation, which is necessary for work. This lighting-spatial operation, which takes place both in the work area and in the office area, is materialized through the introduction of large skylights which, in addition to providing light, once again establish a visual connection between the interior and the exterior.

qualifying the ceiling by using a continuous reflective corrugated metal sheet that brings unity and luminosity to the offices. The entire ceiling of the upper floor is covered with an element of industrial nature such as steel sheeting, which helps to maintain the original industrial character and narrative of the building and to separate it from the domestic character it would have had without it.

A singular case with regard to the ceiling is the meeting room, where the use of sheet metal is interrupted and replaced by a suspended garden. This spatial situation marks a point of exception and seeks to construct a different narrative to the rest of the space reserved exclusively for visitors to the centre.

and conditioning the office space with equipment that is flexible enough to make (almost) any work configuration possible through a model that is based on a system rather than a design. As opposed to a cellular organization, the interaction of workers is sought through furniture that not only facilitates individual or group work but also encourages the relationship between workers.

These five actions build SIDERALa hybrid building type in the industrial landscape of Móstoles that operates through architectural logics of the present, uniting the productive model of the office with another so necessary and contemporary model, where the limits between work and life are diluted.

Built work

Credits 

Location Móstoles, Madrid, Spain

Year 2020

Built area 630 m2

Client REPAPUBLI

Architecture gon (Gonzalo Pardo)

Team Alejandro Sánchez, Carol Pierina Linares, María Cecilia Cordero, Iván Rando

Construction Serviteco Obras s.l.

Furniture Lambda3 s.a.

Green ceiling Mi jardín vertical

Lighting Oliva iluminación

Art production Puzzle Eventos s.l. (Paula Delgado)

Photography Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)

Published in

Beauty, health and well-being are some of the terms that are as much debated as they are recurrent in the history of humanity; Clinique La Prairie, with which Clinique La Prairie, with its first Aesthetics & Longevity center outside Switzerland, located in the center of Madrid, wants to continue to be identified. As pioneers in cellular therapies that aim to act against the aging process, where technical innovation is at the level of medical care, this Clinique is linked to a sophisticated luxurious hospitality. This is what the challenge of this project seems to be: how to translate and build all these concepts into the space/time of an aesthetic medicine clinic?

The project responds to a proposal that seeks to understand the design of a medical space, about 600 m2, destined for human care as if it were the interior of a body. This perspective covers very different fields, which correspond both to the proximity of human relationships, ergonomics, the sensitive world, and consumption as well as the technical and professional approach necessary to decide on the treatment, control its execution and establish the size of each space according to its use, design the functional elements and incorporate the conditioning and lighting system.

The physical and material structure of the public space (reception, waiting areas and corridors) is organized, both in plan and in section, by curved white walls and dark stone floors; this -soft- system not only enhances and adds value to the transitional spaces of the center, but also facilitates the fluid movement of customers through the spaces.

The rest of the clinic -the private areas - (cabinets and offices), maintain the same criteria as the public area, except that white, is also present in the flooring and is characterized by spatial fluidity, configured as a succession of rooms where both doctors and patients can move from one to another without interruption.

The new Clinique La Prairie Madrid is a non-linear interior that symbolizes cleanliness, purity, and hygrothermal comfort where, in addition to a comprehensive medical experience, it offers the client an architectural experience in which the senses intervene.

Built work

Credits

Location Madrid, Spain

Year 2020

Built area 600 m2

Client Clinique La Prairie Spain

Architecture gon (Gonzalo Pardo)
Team Carol Linares, Alejandro Sánchez, Carlos Barranco
Project manager Marta Sánchez Salas
Construction Ancordarq S.L.
Front desk Abalit Elementos Moldeados S.L.
Furniture DomésticoShop
Lighting Oliva iluminación
Photography Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)

Published in 

Before the intervention, the south-facing terrace of María José and Ernesto’s attic, adjacent to the living-dining room and the master bedroom - situated in a rationalist building by Manuel Cabanyes - with views over the Chamberí district of Madrid, was a space that was not sufficiently used, neither in winter nor in summer. Besides these exceptional starting conditions, the poor physical and visual contact between the interior and the exterior, due to the existence of a not very permeable wall, as well as the height difference between the terrace and the house (almost half a meter), caused the couple a certain physical and mental reluctance every time they wanted to go out for any activity. Thus, they considered it a lost space.

The assignment, besides being small (20 sqm), was a great challenge because our intervention depended on both María José and Ernesto recovering the desire to enjoy their terrace in all its potential, a well-desired and rare space in Madrid, thus transforming their relationship with the house.

The intervention on the terrace seeks to completely rearticulate the domestic space, from the access to the house and to the adjacent rooms, based on the definition of two very simple but forceful actions. On one hand, by leveling the living-dining room and the bedroom with the terrace in order to establish a continuous layout between the interior and the exterior; and, on the other hand, by perforating as much as possible the wall that connects the terrace with both spaces in order to bring in a greater amount of light and, incidentally, the city of Madrid.

The new fluid, continuous and permeable spatial situation of the house facilitates the construction of a green “backdrop” visible both from the bed and the sofa or the dining table. This continuous strip, as if it were a swimming pool, is built from a small 10 x 10 square ceramic in a Pantone poolgreen color, which seeks to recover the language and the original aesthetics of the nineteen-thirties house.

Depending on the position in the terrace, the strip transforms and mutates: while on the party wall it widens to contain a flower box with a wisteria, María José’s favorite plant, to provide shade on summer days. On the wall that overlooks the street, the strip is sometimes raised and used for flower pots, and at other times it becomes a bench to sit on to watch the light changes in the Madrid sky.

Built work

Published in

The traditional structure of apartments in Madrid, a system of load-bearing walls parallel to the facade that enclose a set of rooms of different sizes that revolve around interior courtyards and are isolated and at the same time connected by a corridor, is the starting point for this house for a single person located on the third floor of an apartment building in the Malasaña neighborhood. The most singular physical and measurable characteristic of the apartment is its length: from one end of the house to the other there are 21 linear metres that give the hints for an adequate intervention. The project's floor plan is the result of a complete emptying of the house that organizes the domestic space into a single environment in which it is compatible with the spatial strategy of walls of the initial state. In other words, the pre-existing system of contiguous rooms is re-established only in this second life, larger and connected to each other ensuring that the unity and continuity between the parts is recovered. Consequently, new topological and programmatic relationships result in a free and fluid domestic space, liquid,where the concept of a living space is investigated through the construction of   scenographies of the habitat vinculadas a las acciones básicas de cocinar, dormir, descansar, trabajar, relacionarse y de limpieza y cuidado del cuerpo, ya que las esquinas de las habitaciones, antes fondos de saco (cul de sac), se entienden como áreas de oportunidad donde experimentar a través de elementos visuales que giran el espacio curvándolo y constituyen, mediante el uso del color y la iluminación, de forma simbólica, el lugar en el que se desarrolla una acción, y que conforman una producción escénica doméstica que, sobre un suelo de madera continuo, además de entender y potenciar la vivienda como un lugar estancial, también permite explicar la casa como una sucesión de narrativas contemporáneas que articulan los recorridos transversales y longitudinales, públicos y privados, susceptibles de ser constantemente reconfigurados en función de las necesidades de Carlos, su dueño, que, frente al exclusivo funcionalismo doméstico, facilitan el sueño de habitar. 

Built work

FINALIST. FAD de Arquitectura y Diseño 2020 Prize

Credits

Location Madrid, Spain

Year 2020

Built area 124m2

Client private

Architecture gon (Gonzalo Pardo) + Ana Torres

Team Alejandro Sánchez, Carol Linares, Carlos Barranco, Clara Dios, Iván Rando

Construction Serviteco Obras s.l

Carpentry Alma Ebanistería s.l

Kitchen Barronkress s.l

Flooring Jesús del Ser y Cía s.a

Lighting Lighting Oliva iluminación

Photography Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)

Published in

The challenge. It was at the beginning of May 2019 Lara and Susana, contacted us through a mutual friend to tell us they had rented a ‘very strange’ place in Las Tablas neighborhood in Madrid where they wanted to make their own dance and theatre school. When we met for the first time in our studio, where they commissioned us with the project in exchange for only two conditions: the budget couldn’t exceed 40,000 euros and the school had to be up and running within four months.

The context. On the border between the countryside and the city, on a residual plot resulting from poor urban planning and its triangular geometry, is SULA, a space for teaching and production of dance and theatre for children and adults. The initial conditions of the premises are clear: a space of 89 square meters with a sandy floor, sanitary facilities hanging from the ceiling and a blind brick facade highly visible from the road. Decision-making is in favor of the economy of the project and seeks at all times the principle of minimum energy and maximum results.

The organization. From the outside in, the façade, which is arranged with three types of standard windows at different heights, to relate the interior to the exterior in different ways, seeks to be an element of mediation and urban connection that articulates the space of the city located between the existing buildings and the school itself.

From the inside, the project is thought of as a large room, where the position of the toilet cabin -with universal accessibility according to regulations- practically determines the spatial configuration. The teaching center is organized by programmatic bands in which, from the larger side of the triangle to the smaller ones, the storage space, the main room, the locker room, and the entrance reception follow one another.

The system. Taking into account the state of the art of contemporary practice in the field of dance and theatre, which seeks, above all, the conception of a ductile, elastic, malleable and mutable space, the school is configured as an experimental, flexible, adaptable, soft and polyvalent place thanks to a system of curtains of different colors that facilitate its transformation. These hanging structures, in addition to offering acoustic insulation, allow multiple configurations depending on the spatial needs that are demanded at any given moment (class, show, or rehearsal), and also admit transformations where the luminous and acoustic vibrations, dances, turns, games and gravitations, elements of today’s scenic world, take place.

The construction of the project took place between the months of August and September, opening the curtain to the public on Tuesday, October 1, 2019.

Built work

SELECTED. Premios FAD Arquitectura y diseño 2020

Credits

Location Las Tablas, Madrid, Spain

Year 2020

Built area 89m2

Client El UNIVERSO DE SULA

Architecture gon (Gonzalo Pardo)

Team Carol Linares, Alejandro Sánchez, Carlos Barranco

Construction Serviteco Obras s.l

Textiles Rabadán s.a

Laser cut Ctrl-X

Façade intervention Fer Segovia + OBOE

Photography Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán y Rocío Romero)

Published in

Vallecas, the neighborhood where the new dental clinic is located, is one of the most historic neighborhoods on the outskirts of Madrid. The clothes hanging on the facades of most of its streets, the frenetic activity of small businesses, its high population density and interraciality, the unique and unconditional supporters of their own soccer team, or the preference to write its name with K, turn this place into a micro-world with its own identity.

Despite its indoor condition, the new dental space, located on the ground floor of the old telegraph building and next to the emblematic Plaza de la Villa de Vallecas, has the ambitious vocation not only to make a city but also to be part of the daily life of the neighborhood. Thus, the main strategy for occupying the premises is the construction of an interior street that aims to be an extension of the plaza; a space that is both a waiting room and a public space.

Linked to this street, the clinic's most public program is established in the form of a saw: the toilet, the reception, the care office and the sterilization room. Next, and separated by the only load-bearing wall of the premises, are the three operating rooms and the X-ray room. After this room, at the end of the room, there is a small private room fitted for the rest of the health personnel.

In contrast to the hygienic white of the floor, walls, and ceiling of the clinic, the color is the common denominator of all the rooms; It is the constructive element that articulates and gives coherence to the project. In the saw, a gradient from dark blue to yellow guides the patient to the cabinets. Once there, lying down, the ceilings recreate natural scenes that lead patients to other more relaxed worlds during the time they are being treated. The route back to the street is, however, white. At night, the mountain range lights up, as if it were a lantern, leaving a trail of color that illuminates the streets of Vallecas, making the clinic a landmark.

Built work

Credits

Location Villa de Vallecas, Madrid, Spain

Year 2019

Built area 120m2

Client Clínica Dental Galbis 

Architecture gon (Gonzalo Pardo) + Ana Torres + Rodrigo Delso

Team Alejandro Sánchez, Clara Dios

Construction Serviteco obras s.l

Furniture Barronkress s.l

Photography and video Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)

Related projects

Hedonism and pleasure are possibly the two concepts most present in many of the decisions which were made in order to redesign this penthouse. The house, which is for a person who lives alone, is located in the center of Madrid.

As opposed to an exclusively functional domestic organization, where space would be defined, as it has been traditionally, by the number of rooms that compose it, in this new design we have considered real and imagined aspects. It is now projected as a diffuse space, free of partitions, where the boundaries between rooms are blurred so that any unexpected actions can occur.

Different sensations define the function of each area such as smell, touch and sight that are the fundamental elements of construction; in like manner it is made of the desire to produce and consume experiences that are to come, in solitude or with company: such as, sitting by the fireplace in winter, bathing in the pool with the windows open, reading on the terrace amidst the greenery or watching the stars on the roof on a summer night.

The body is the protagonist of all these dreams that develop in a mutable hybrid space, halfway between a loft and a matryoshka. While the actions of cooking, eating, sleeping, exercising, socializing, working or resting, take place in a free environment defined by the shape and position of objects and their scenographic conditions, the cleaning and care of the body are carried out in a set of connected rooms in the heart of the house.

The storage system, a wooden core-cabinet that occupies the center of the house, is the link between both worlds. Besides storing clothes, sheets, towels, and other items, a play element: it conceals between its doors a secret access to the bathroom, creating a place of surprise and mystery in the house.

The limits of the domestic space, a linear planter more than ten meters long and two south-facing terraces are green landscapes conceived as artificial devices that dissolve the boundaries between public and private, interior and exterior, house and city.

All this is my home, the one I need. A home that, far from being a space of representation and appearance, above all seeks the significance of a place for life.

Built work

Credits

Location Madrid

Year 2018

Built area 121m2

Client private

Architecture gon (Gonzalo Pardo)

Team Alejandro Sánchez, Clara Dios

Construction Serviteco Obras s.l

Carpentry Alma Ebanistería s.l

Kitchen Vonna

Photography Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán y Rocío Romero)

Published in

Libros.com is an independent publishing house that operates exclusively online. Along with book sales, they finance their projects collectively through crowdfunding, a democratic management model that seeks to establish a community between patrons (readers) and authors. However, the members of this community have hardly ever met in person.

When Roberto, one of its four partners, called us in the early summer of 2017, he proposed the challenge of creating a physical space for the publishing house after finding a store of barely 10 m2 near Plaza de España in Madrid. The result of this 'materialisation' is La Berlinesa: a place with a vocation as a meeting point for patrons and authors that is articulated as a hybrid business model that unites three of the passions common to its partners: books, coffee and the city of Berlin.

The baseline conditions for La Berlinesa are, as almost always in architectural projects, two: deadlines and money. The commission required the premises to be opened to the public in a record time of two months and with a budget of just 6,000 euros. Our answer was clear: we will do nothing (or almost nothing). As in Ockham's razor, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the most likely.

Starting with precise actions, we tried out low-cost solutions to activate this obsolete space, which was completely covered with strippled paint. We recovered the history of the store present in its walls with a hammer and chisel, bringing back from the past a brick load-bearing wall and two partitions painted in a blue-greenish colour when the space was an electronics shop.

Despite the small size of the store, the regulations require the space to be equipped with a toilet for the staff. What at first appeared to be a disadvantage became a virtue and an opportunity to resolve the interior organization of the store; we thus built a minimum volume located at the entrance, which we covered with a mirror to make it disappear and which also builds a threshold, giving more depth to the space.

On this mirror are reflected, as well as the city and the neighbours of the neighbourhood, the different books placed on linear wooden shelves that we placed on the opposite wall and which, as if it were a panopticon, save space while allowing the user-customer to visualise all the available titles at once.

We kept the existing hydraulic tile floor and placed on it the element in which most of the budget was invested: a table. Beyond being a piece of furniture with legs like books open upside down, it is architectural; it has the capacity to organise and articulate the space of La Berlinesa, establishing the boundary between inside and outside, between the shop assistant and the customer. In other words, the table acts as the mediator of the place.

We also painted the brick wall at the back in white to make the space wider, and the ceiling in black to achieve a lower volume.

Finally, in the left corner we created a door to another world with a mirror that distorts and transforms the room. A door that sums up the magic of La Berlinesa. We don't know if it leads us to the past or to the future, but what we are sure of is that this new era will be full of books. And coffee.

Built work

Credits

Location Madrid

Year 2017

Built area 10m2

Client Libros.com

Architecture gon (Gonzalo Pardo) + Ana Torres

Team Alejandro Sánchez

Carpentry Alma Ebanistería s.l

Photography Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero), Asier Rúa

Published in

MANIFESTO

becoming names the exhibition proposal for 2018. Situated in the learning environments of Architecture and continuing with the temporary character of the successful Unfinished of the Spanish pavilion of the previous edition, becoming alludes to a vector of the future, with a common origin of training in the School, which extends to other spaces and times of learning in dialogue with other disciplines.

Assuming teaching practices as architectural practices in their own right, becoming shows Spanish architecture through the work of a magnificent pool of architects, - where they female professionals are currently more than the male ones -, which demands rethinking the conditions of learning environments in relation to the new current emergencies, abandoning the predefined schemes of order.

Within these areas of training and research, becoming focuses on the students´ actions, discourses, and productions, leaving aside both the pedagogies that have enabled their development such as the instrumentation and the agents involved.

becoming, through a large amount of critical practice that has abandoned predefined schemes of order, aims to show the complexity of our operational logics, trying to transform them into systems as simple as the choreography of everyday life itself in order to make them accessible to all citizens.

Far from disciplinary autism, without closed categories, specific themes, or excluding fields, becoming wants to be an open-door experience to an unknown atmosphere, where students cook up conflicts, needs and other ways of being in the world.

For this purpose, becoming takes place simultaneously in the physical and virtual pavilion - where all accepted contributions will have a place - in an augmented space-time in continuous transformation.

Built work

Credits

Location Spanish pavilion, Venice, Italy

Year 2018

Built area 700m2

Client Ministry of Development, Directorate-General for Architecture, Housing and Land

Comisaria Atxu Amann

Comisarios adjuntos Andrés Cánovas, María Mallo, Nicolás Maruri, Gonzalo Pardo

Image and virtual pavilion bestiario

Design tema gráfica futura + Ioannes Busca + Open this end + Temperaturas Extremas + gon

Exterior intervention Ana Matos, Íñigo Ocamica, Antonio Samaniego, Íñigo Tudanca

Participants Estudiantes de entornos educativos españoles (2012-2018)

Collaborators After Belonging, Victoria Acebo, Carlos Arroyo, Pedro Astigarraga, José Ballesteros, Maite Borjabad, Nerea Calvillo, Iñaki Carnicero, Izaskun Chinchilla, Raquel Congosto, Juan Domingo Santos, Javier Echeverría, Alberto Estévez, Guillermo Fernández Abascal, Jacobo Gª-Germán, Susana García Bujalance, Paula García-Masedo, Andrea González, María José Ferrero Ibargüen, Juan Herreros, Manuel Jiménez, Amparo Lasén, MAIO, Josep Maria Montaner, Nacho Martín, Vicente Monroy, Paula Montoya, Zaida Muxi, Alberto Nanclares_Basurama, n’UNDO, Manuel Ocaña, Manuel Pascual_Zuloark, Ana Peñalba, José Pérez de Lama, Pedro Pitarch, Carlos Quintans, Sampling Contexts (Begoña de Abajo Castrillo, Enrique Espinosa Pérez, Carlos García Fernández, Eva Gil Lopesino, Ángela Juarranz Serrano, Álvaro Martín Fidalgo y Borja Sallago Zambrano), Renata Sentkiewicz, Ter, Eduardo Vivanco, Remedios Zafra

Content management Luis Álvarez, Kiara Firpi, Alba González, David J. Iniesta, Elena M. Millana, Aida Red, Fernando Segovia

Translation Ángela O´Driscoll

Communication and media Paty Núñez Agency

Experts committee Alberto Alarcón, Eva Álvarez, Irma Arribas, Uriel Fogué, Manuel Gausa, Andrés Jaque, María Langarita, José Morales, Enrique Nieto, Guadalupe Piñera, Almudena Ribot, Juana Sánchez

Production Clorofila Digital, Pellisa Ràfols, Nuonled

Sponsorships Sika, Don Apolonio, Pata Negra, La Española, Don Simón, Auara , Kriskadecor, Ecoluciona, Elisa Tomat, Jaulas abiertas, Cosentino, Constructora San José

Photography and video Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)

Published in

Airbnb, the online marketplace for lodging, primarily homestays for vacation rentals, and tourism activities, due to its temporary nature, offers an opportunity to reflect and explore risky and innovative typological solutions, both in their spatial organization and in their material definition that move away from traditional housing models.

Under this condition, a space consisting of a single rectangular room measuring 7.47 x 2.80 meters was designed, open to an interior patio facing west, where the vast majority of domestic actions take place; that's where you eat, you go to sleep, you read, you receive guests, you watch television and you even work. The arrangement of the storage unit/ bed at one end of the house facilitates the reconfiguration and transformation of the domestic space at any given moment, depending on the time of day, the days of the week, and the number of users involved.

In addition to this multifunctional room, there are two service rooms connected to it: the entrance, the kitchen and the bathroom. The colors of the three spaces (blue, yellow and grey), besides marking the spatial character and defining the program and use of each room, are symbolic historical representations of the cave in the case of the entrance to the house, of the fire in the room where food production takes place, and of the stone wall in the main room.

Both worlds, that of the service rooms and that of the multifunctional room, are linked by an old wall built from wooden beams and pillars and filler material that is recovered and rehabilitated to act as a mediator between the three rooms while allowing us to reflect on the classic domestic dualities such as public/private, inside/outside or interior/ exterior.

Built work

Credits

Location Madrid

Year 2018

Built area 29m2

Client private

Architecture gon (Gonzalo Pardo)

Team Alejandro Sánchez, Carol Pierina

Construction Serviteco Obras s.l

Carpentry (mueble cama) El Rey de las Camas s.l

Kitchen Electro Sanz Plaza s.l

Photography Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán y Rocío Romero), Asier Rúa

Published in

Communication and mediation are the main keys to architectural activity which, in just a few decades, has gone from being a consumption product to becoming a public action and a social construction device. Consequently, in this scenario, the role of architects has more to do with interdisciplinary teamwork and association than with authorship.

It is within this framework that CO. is presented, an exhibition of fifteen national and international working groups, self-described as collectives, whose common factor is mediation as an architectural practice. These are free professionals from different disciplines who, motivated by economic, social and/or academic crises, form collaborative teams that seek to innovate the forms of architectural production from a common identity.

This selection of groups, created between 2001 and 2015, apply collaborative methodologies at different scales working, among other issues, with citizen participation, interdisciplinarity, or (self)organization in horizontal hierarchies. They rely on alternative work platforms where networks -physical and digital- are key to develop their projects, real or invented, cooperating with other citizen, technical and institutional agents.

From the creation of video art to the construction of communal houses, the work of these collectives oscillates between the constructed, the ephemeral, the artistic, and the technological. Without predefined commissions, the importance of their works is not so much a formal result as the richness and complexity of the process.

The fifteen invited collectives represent a diversity of practices and projects that are organized and related in a space and time represented in a forest of props through different mediaActions that define the First International Congress on Architectural Communication (COCA'17), a project carried out within the Master in Architectural Communication (MaCA).

Built work

Selected BID Student Showcase 2017

Realización catalogada. Arquia/Próxima VI Edition 2016-2017

Credits

Location Zuazo Venue, Madrid, Spain

Year 2017

Built area 455m2

Client Ministry of Development of Spain

Architecture Alejandro Sánchez, Andrés Román, Angelique Trachana, Begoña Torres, Carol Linares, Cristian Guano, David Jiménez, Despoina Valiadi, Georgiana Serbanoiu, Gonzalo Barahona, Gonzalo Pardo, Jaime San Simón, Jesús Pedraz, Kiara Firpi, María José Vela, Marjorie Casado, Rubén López. Máster Universitario en Comunicación Arquitectónica (MaCA)

Audiovisuals Dayfisa s.a / Infortel

Printing Diagonal80 s.l

Carpentry Finsa (Financiera Maderera s.a)

Struts Ischebeck Ibérica s.l

Carpet PERGO

Stationery Sancer (sanz y cervel, s.l)

Catering La Paella de Papel (María Navascués)

Photography Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán y Rocío Romero)

Published in

The first International Congress on Architectural Communication (COCA-17) is organized within the scope of the Master's Degree in Architectural Communication (MACA) of the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM), by the Hypermedia Educational Research and Innovation Group in collaboration with the Scuola di Dottorato in Architettura e Design of the Università degli Studi di Genova (ADD) during May 17, 18 and 19, 2017.

In recent decades it seems that architecture has ceased to be exclusively a product of design and construction to become a vehicle for social action. Communication and mediation are keys in this process. Nowadays, the role of architects has more to do with working in interdisciplinary teams than with personal authorship. Following this line of thought, COCA has been developed as a horizontal workshop between teachers and students within the scope of the Global Communication Project of MACA during the 2016-17 academic year. It is an International Congress that seeks to create common spaces between multiple disciplines and social agents in order to investigate the function of mediation and communication in architecture.

The teaching experience covers the different formats and strategies of communication through the overall design of a multiple event that includes the organization of a congress along with an exhibition, several workshops and urban actions. Thus, it is aimed at exercising the various specific and transversal competencies in the field of communication, from graphic design and the creation of corporate image to the dissemination strategy, the staging and presentation of the different contents.

The innovation of the project is to understand learning far from simulation, turning any course exercise into a real assignment: the design of an event as a complex transversal activity, responsibilities and commitments that must be solved by the team, from the theoretical contents, the design of the communicative dynamics and the interaction with different agents to the spatial and environmental project of an event impregnated with a character between the scientific and the playful-festive. The teaching methodology is based on the self-organization of an international and heterogeneous group of students and the success in benefiting from this heterogeneity of skills of each of the team members in a natural way.

All the elements of the event are designed and executed by the students of the master's program who, under the same graphic and ideological identity, revise the established patterns in this type of events, and propose new formats of architectural communication.

The scenography is a light, inflatable, roll-up and mobile kit that turns this event into a mobile congress that wanders through different spaces of the School of Architecture, the Chamber of Architects, the Ministry of Development and the city of Madrid. During three days, 120 congress participants and 25 guests from different disciplines were able to participate in these five sessions with thematic round tables on pedagogy, instrumentation or citizenship.

Built work

Selected BID Student Showcase 2017
Selected project Arquia/Próxima VI Edition 2016-2017

Location Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM), Official Chamber of Architects of Madrid (COAM), Arquería de Nuevos Ministerios, and the streets of Madrid, Spain.
Architecture Alejandro Sánchez, Andrés Román, Angelique Trachana, Begoña Torres, Carol Linares, Cristian Guano, David Jiménez, Despoina Valiadi, Georgiana Serbanoiu, Gonzalo Barahona, Gonzalo Pardo, Jaime San Simón, Jesús Pedraz, Kiara Firpi, María José Vela, Marjorie Casado, Rubén López. Master's Degree in Architectural Communication (MACA)
Collaborators Dayfisa / Infortel (audiovisual equipment), Diagonal80 (printouts), Finsa (carpentry), Pergo (carpets), Sancer (stationery), La Paella de Papel (catering)
Funding Polytechnic University of Madrid, Ministry of Public Works of the Government of Spain.

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