Arganzuela, Madrid

Elcano is a treeless street in the district of Arganzuela, next to Madrid city center, the Reina Sofia Museum and Atocha Station. Years ago, the area was occupied bylow-rise buildings, warehouses, workshops and other secondary uses that, in recent decades, have been replaced with a series of industrial-like housing buildings lying amid more conventional ones. The old workshops occupied the plots entirely. The regulations, restricting the building to a 12 m depth, produces some interior free areas that are often occupied with gardens and pools, something not very common in the neighborhood that gives a kind of unique quality to these developments.  The project is located on the second block of the street, between party walls, and occupies the maximum volume allowed by the regulations: a 22 x 12 m trapezoidal floorplan-coinciding with the boundaries of the site- with a height of about 14 m.

Cross section

The project is properly understood as a section responding to two fundamental variables: type and context. The volume is drilled with two double and triple height gaps adjusting the maximum built surface: a car and pedestrian passage resembling the old industrial constructions in the area, and a void in the façade that allows the natural ventilation of the garage, two floors below ground level. The built surface subtracted from the main facade, facing north and noisy, is used to build two-story apartments in the lower part of the building opening to the interior façade, to the southern garden. The rest of the levels are organized with three 2-bedroom apartments per floor, two of them connecting bothfacades and a third one on the interior garden. A penthouse with two additional houses tops the volume. The result: 13 apartments, 13 storage rooms, a gardenwith a swimming pool and 32 underground parking spaces.

Domestic space

The apartments are organized based on contemporary criteria. Continuous polished-cement floors, drywall partitions, floor-to-ceiling thresholds. Storage and wet rooms, as usual, are in the central spine of the plant. The space is fluid, connecting corridors and kitchens with living areas through large sliding door.