Proposals – unfinished.es

Arquinautas de la cosmopista

moon — Sun, 01 May 2016 02:12:06 +0000

Background: In february 1973 –and along two weeks- a double-decker bus was transformed into a traveling and audiovisual library thanks to the different architecture schools in uk. The project, carried out by the aa, was inspired in the concept of polyark regarding the idea of cedric price about a collaborative net for knowledge and awareness.
May 23, 1982. Julio cortázar and carol dunlop drove their volkswagen combi for a month through the paris-marseille highway under the premise of not leaving that road. As a result, they discovered all the minor issues of the territory and collected them in the book ‘autonauts of the cosmoroute’.
In 1997 the “housing bubble in Spain” arose and the wild speculation caused the disappearance of an aesthetic and ethical sense in the dynamics of construction.
In 2007 the bubble bursted causing a devastating housing crisis, the economic rescue of the savings banks, the increase of the evictions and the destruction of both natural and human ecosystems.
In 2015 an interview of Pascal Gielen to Rem Koolhaas was published in the exhibition catalogue of “Constant. New Babylon”. The Dutch architect states that ‘the matter is not about bringing use to a project, but to tell stories.’
Current situation: limbo space: The “Unfinished” is synonymous of pure uncertainty, or as Cedric Price could say, a “Limbo Space”. In these areas, according to the British architect, the most intense moment of the architecture takes place, since the essence of architecture is no longer laying in a stable construction, well defined and with a specific programs, but in unstable situations that are inhabited by underling characters out of all standard, cliché or economic role.
In the “Unfinished”, the stakeholders no longer askthemselves what is imposed or what is planned, but What are the aesthetics of the limbo? Who lives in the limbo? What are their lifestyles?
Detection-action: In 2016 the construction industry begins to revive and the “aesthetics of the post-bubble” do not respond to a change of paradigm. In this context, a project arises to make the agents involved in the unfinished state of the Spanish housing and infraestructure VIEW, EXPERIMENT and LEARN FROM THEIR BODIES the scenario caused by themselves. Thus, rather than promoting a specific action, this project is positioned in a previous state where there is no big interest in seeking a “happy end” to these “Unfinished” territories, but in knowing how to shape the needs of the people out of any design pattern.
Proposal: An itinerant and critical observatory is proposed conformed by the Involved Agents: Developers, builders, lawyers, politicians and architects, who will travel in transport systems -with an oniric-satiric-critical design- to the ‘Unfinished’. The aim is to sensitize -from the very same skin- to rethink new urban plans, laws, construction and / or lifestyles.
This program of critical mobility will travel through 12 “Limbo Spaces” of the Spanish territory divided into three observatories:
1_Critical maritime Observatory: To study the coasts, the watersheds, the shores and the other natural assets and protected lands that they have been silted by mass tourism.
2_Critical road Observatory: To check out the periphery of the sui generis stories embodied by a population with forced aesthetics and culture to adopt ways of life imposed by promoters, regulations and formal abstractions.
3_Critical flying Observatory: To be aware of how the fertile territories have become obsolete by the existence of infrastructure that did not respond to real users’ needs.

Credits

Arquinauts of the Cosmoroute. Itinerant Critical Observatory.

Author:
Víctor Manuel Cano Ciborro

Team:
Alejandro Burgueño Díaz,José Manuel de Andrés Moncayo, Ana Sabugo Sierra, José Javier Cullen Afonso, Rocío Romero Rivas

2016

La entrada Arquinautas de la cosmopista aparece primero en unfinished.es.

Hinges

moon — Sun, 01 May 2016 02:11:44 +0000

This is a small proposal and written reflection about the role of certain elements to transform and multiply the possibilities of moments. A plea in favor of the little things, which are actually tremendously important. What is presented herein is only one example of a possible use, and the potential transformation and power that a small thing generates around itself.

A real situation: all those spaces and containers that can be filled by any program and whose use may frequently change.

How to operate in an interior space of uncertain contents and an outside with no contact with what happens inside? How to associate curiosity and the act of looking? How to guide the body and extend an invitation to come and discover?

Working with entering and leaving movements… At the limit, in that thick (or thin) wall, with that tension between what will soon be filled with contents and what is free but feels the need to know and participate in what happens inside.

We thought of a mechanism that could be converted into an interchange hub, of looks and actions … Something with an attracting nature but such that, at the same time, its nature could also generate contents … We thought of frames, metal racks, attached to the façades of the buildings, but with the possibility of colonizing the free space.

Those sweeps, as they are opened, generate spaces, delimit free areas, localize entrances, suggest looks. Due to their nudity condition, they also provide the possibility of being filled with the contents and the effect of the activities taking place inside the containers. They can support opaque or translucent layers. They can serve as a screen where to project on. Its sweep can work as an entry or exit gate, and also as a limit on the street outside.

But these racks could not work by themselves. Their angles of opening and separation from the façades depend on hinges. Attached to the old buildings façades, these hinges modulate movement and occupation. They are the cornerstone of this project. They condense it.

They work like bollards on a dock … Almost unnoticed objects that make everything work in the end…

Credits

Hinges: variable mechanisms for spaces with uncertain contents

Author:
Sarai Cancela and Diego Lucio Barral

2016

La entrada Hinges aparece primero en unfinished.es.

The Architecture and The Refugees Tale

moon — Sun, 01 May 2016 02:10:18 +0000

Architecture Land lived in peace in a society organized in four groups: Promoters, Labourers, Users and Architects.
Promoters boosted society with their ambition, Labourers were the strongest. Users admired Architecture, but could not relate with her.Architects were the only ones in touch with Her. Led by the Design Board, they worshipped the Holy Architecture, who ensured the Country’s well-being.
One bad day a relentless crisis happened with no warning.
There were breaking years during which huge urbanized pieces of land were abandoned.Promoters entered a state of depression. Labourers lost their strength.Users blamed the Design Board of forgetting about the Country’s defense.
Architects fled abroad. Only a few stayed.
Holy Architecture was no longer worshipped.There were terrible wars far away and in Architecture Land they heard of thousands of Refugees looking for shelter.The Design Board reactivated the free urbanized spaces with Architects and Refugees by installing two ephemeral architectural devices.A tent hiding behind a Greek temple as workspace for the Architects. And a twisting queue designed to hold the wait of the Refugees.
Architects built two towers and a big central square.
They would work in the towers in their sketches for the new buildings.
Refugees would hear the decisions made by the Architects and would use the Square, an open space conceived for the People, to manifest their discontent. Refugees were given the right to cultivate the land trapped by the net of useless infrastructures.Refugees got those vast camps to be productive again. The lonely vacant lots trapped by soulless nets of infrastructures became fertile again. They grew roots in this land they now called home.
Architects realized that when they worked for the user, Architecture would reward them with a prosperous social environment.
Architects decided to protect the construction from trivialization by their memorialization.Refugees were not convinced about it. But as it made their life better, they agreed to trust the Architects.Memorialization meant a lot to the Architects as it brought back the essence lost during the crisis.The Architects asigned one monumentalization to each abandoned space, which would contain independent reflections.
The first monument arises from Aldo Rossi’s melancholia.
The second one emerges from Le Corbusier’s manifesto about the refuge.The third one turns Raggi’s tent into a temple. In the fourth one Alberti’s4 façade hides what does not belong to the canons. In the fifth one a fake mountain elevates the tent to turn it into a landmark. In the sixth one the Architects build a painting by De Chirico.In the seventh one the tent climbs onto Nicolas Ledoux’s plinth.
Once the crisis was defeated, social groups did recover, but the Design Board did not.Promoters used their regained ambition to take over the Country.Arquitects were revoked through the destruction of their towers and worship to Holy Architecture ceased.The next move was to build in the Square. Participative design dies and a New Order is born.
With worship to the Markets as State religion, a profitable product was everything that mattered.Labourers adapted to the new Regime.Users were converted to Markets adoration.Architects admitted their defeat.Architecture vanished from Architecture Land and the neglect towards environment caused a major climate change of catastropphic consequences.When Architecture dies, humanity lives worse.

Credits

The Architecture and The Refugees Tale

Author:
OOIIO, Joaquin Millán Villamuelas

Project teams:
Alejandra Sánchez Vázquez, Gaetano Carambia y Marta Muñoz Hermoso (Traducción)

2016

La entrada The Architecture and The Refugees Tale aparece primero en unfinished.es.

The courtyard after the fire

moon — Sun, 01 May 2016 02:09:56 +0000

In December 2012, of the company headquarters of ATHISA, located in the industrial area of Asegra, suffered a fire. The office area remained intact while the industrial area, where different goods were stored and the manufacturing of chemical products was made, was reduced to rubble.
We believe that this accidental fact can be a key point to enrich the project, rather than treating the plot as a blank canvas, as if nothing had happened. In this way, the new plant comes up from the remains found after the fire, in order to allow the reading of the history of this place in the footsteps of the developed activity and its transformations, after the intervention.
The exploration: Becoming explorers, we made several visits to the site before the remains of the fire were removed, recognizing and recording the objects that had been scattered among the rubble. We documented, stored and cleaned the elements that had more value to workers, who were involved in this process of recovery of objects.
Both the objects themselves, oxidized and sculptural figures deformed by the action of fire, and the walls and floor were of great interest to us. The activity was performed there could still be read on the floor: embedded rails and the marks of the walls once the debris removing began, stamped traces as if it was Duchamp’s great glass.
The courtyard over the rubble: The proposal consists in consolidating this state, the memory of this place brought to light.
The areas where there was a greater accumulation of debris, which coincide with the locations where the objects were stored in the past, become part of a series of open and interconnected courtyards in which the vegetation emerges and where the recovered objects will be arranged like sculptures that link to the past and to the memories of the workers of the company.
A new piece, containing all the activities that were carried out earlier, lies on the areas that were empty and flies over the new courtyards, generating activity at different levels and putting the user in relation to different elements: burned objects, the new vegetation or the distant landscape, totally forgotten in this industrial estate.
In addition, the introduction of a project of this nature in the industrial plot leads to new relationships between activity and landscape, as the usual thing in this site is to have the windows of the offices looking and opening to the inside of the industrial plant. Through this strategy, by which the maximum level available in the polygon is used to double the available ground surface, much of the ground floor is released, so the 3 different industrial uses are developed between the yards over the debris, serving as the structural support, while the new office area is rosen to a higher level to enjoy natural light and the new vegetation.
The project takes advantage of the new roof as a viewpoint and as a resting place for workers, while being an excellent platform for holding events. The elevated position above the decks of the depots of this industrial site, will serve to enjoy the distant landscape: Sierra Nevada, Sierra de Huétor, Sierra Elvira Vega of Granada.

Credits

The courtyard after the fire

Authors:
Serrano + Baquero

2016

La entrada The courtyard after the fire aparece primero en unfinished.es.

Intervention in a ruin inside the Alhambra

moon — Sun, 01 May 2016 02:08:32 +0000

Cependantcela se détruit, celapasse, bientôtcela sera passé. Diderot
Ruin (From lat. ruına, ruere).A fallen, wrecked, or decayed condition.
The Palace of Charles V in the Alhambra is a past simple of how an architectural project can be a ruin as final product, not due to the passing of time but for its unfinished condition during almost 300 years, harbouring in the upper level a series of roofless rooms –we could even think that they have .
Unfinished architecture, that is to say, ruin.This work tries to find in ancient ruin a leitmotif; a situation that is able to generate new architectures addressing one of the sides of a problem that draws a number of landscapes, ultimately Ruin Landscapes.
The program is a residence for artists in Granada in a place that has been a house, a museum and a photography atelier. Nowadays almost the totality of the roofing has fallen and the vegetation colonizes the rooms, it is a ruin inside the Alhambra. We could say that this state of ruin is in most of the cases linked to the experience of being unable to differentiate between in and out: when the architecture is open sky. Entering becomes leaving and a peculiar atmosphere seizes each wall. There is something that is extracted from these perceptions, in a place understood by the addition of patios; an oblivion aesthetic redeveloped not only through the new architecture but also in the program.
Among the remains of the Meersman Museum the formation of a raw architecture is proposed, daughter of the ruin, mirror of the Alhambra. It takes over abandoned rooms and a garden in addition to the atmosphere of the place. Facing the project from the occupation and extension of the existing, a number of enigmatic places appear. There are patiosno window opens to, or stolen towers of the Alhambra.
Living under the open sky and sharing a place related to the Alhambra are the experiences that each of the guests would possess. Thus every space is a reflection of a tower in the palatine city, which, almost in a plunder or insolent appropriation, conforms a diachronic story between the artists and the monument. The new architecture inherits roofless rooms creating a façade that looks to the sky fabricating experiences in which the guest nearly has to find out the way to colonize his or her own space.
The program is conditioned by the remembrance of the ruin and the arrival of the eight artists related to eight fields of art and knowledge. They are meant to produce a work during a year concerning the Alhambra. Corporal expression, gastronomy, music, written expression, audio-visual, architecture, fine arts and historical knowledge are fields involved. Collision between each one of these fields is sought, but also confrontation with the monument, something pursued by the occupation of eight towers of the Alhambra –presently disused– as ateliers for the guests. The possibility to escape from the building limits generates a direct artist-object of study relation, in a string of trips to secret places.
The result is presented as a raw architecture, with finishing, that ventures to answer how to intervene in a ruin.

Intervention in a ruin inside the Alhambra

Author:
Alejandro Infantes

2016

La entrada Intervention in a ruin inside the Alhambra aparece primero en unfinished.es.

Glass chain

moon — Sun, 01 May 2016 02:07:10 +0000

The landscape of naked objects that the crisis has exposed not only acts as a witness of the upheavals of the model of production of our country, but also of the type of community this model proposes. Turned into an object of consumption, housing multiplies today its profitability by selling individuality through the same, repetitive form. Like a telephone or a pair of shoes, housing is transmitted today associated to an image of exclusiveness, but it ends up producing the standardization of reality. Single-family and row houses are the key product of the system –the differential object that generates a uniform urban fabric and protects the buyers from the traits of collective living.
Interestingly enough, the collapse of this model has not led to a more diverse practice, one that gets closer to the lessons taught at the schools of architecture. On the contrary, it has obliterated it, forcing a whole generation of architects to redefine their roles through new places and languages. From this peripheral position, however, it is possible to look back for a second in order to articulate a conversation on this unfinished landscape. A conversation is what we imagine here.
The project we propose is based upon the collective appropriation of an interrupted real estate development -one that pursues the profitable uniformity of the repeated private unit- to turn it into a true expression of a community generated through difference. Here, the notion of community refers both to the type of fabric we envision and to the development of the project itself. Instead of materializing an individual vision, the conversation feeds off the words of twelve distinct interlocutors, leading to an architecture of difference that stems from the same, shared interest.
With the aim of projecting a parallel reality, this collective reflection is based on the appropriation of twelve unfinished houses in L’Enova, a small village located 55 kilometers south of Valencia. Each interlocutor has acted on an existing house with the only constraint of using the same format and the same graphic ingredients: a drawing template and a photograph. Beyond these constraints, the only limits correspond to each individual look at the project. The new fabric generated after the conversation appears as a latent reflection of an urban model based upon collective difference, multiple opinions and the participation of an abandoned generation.
The most interesting aspect of this collection of distinct voices is that, once placed in parallel, the resulting fragments reveal the potential of this latent reflection when it becomes a project. The twelve colonized photographs no longer appear as a melancholic witness of what could have been, but as a tangible document that materializes a possible model. The debris of an exhausted system of production can be reused as the foundations for an alternative project –a project that pragmatically acts on existing reality to produce a feasible detour.
This alternative reality would bring into contact developers, small owners and architects. Instead of being deployed as a standard product, housing would be developed as a series of individual versions of a shared material source. This would enhance a contingent, uneven and slow consolidation of the built environment that would lead to a more diverse landscape –a landscape that could not be anticipated by unilateral gestures. In the model we envision, a reality that sells individualism through repetition is hacked to activate a collective community made out of individual voices.

Credits

Glass chain

Authors:
Andrea Gimeno, Lluís J. Liñán, Josep Vicent Lluch, Quique Bayarri, Sálvora Feliz, Ángel Gallego, Mayte Gómez, Marta Jarabo, José Mato, Beatriz Martínez, Patricia Ocaña, Tomás Pineda, Felipe Reyno y Jesús Vassallo.

2016

La entrada Glass chain aparece primero en unfinished.es.

The Smartest Route

moon — Sun, 01 May 2016 02:06:48 +0000

Plan of the Madrid periphery for the development of the free zone ring La Ruta Más Astuta (or The Smartest Route)

Introduction
The urban planning developments of the past 20 years have not been completed and have set up the expansion of the city of Madrid in a kind of apocalyptic landscape. A landscape shielded by unconsummated financial interests and the obsolescence of a still existing legal framework that soley supported the developers and designers that planned it.
La Ruta Más Astuta [LRMA] is configured as a territory with the legal regime of a free zone ring. It will have customs, borders, tax benefits, new tax regulations and exceptions to the Organic Law of Construction. The aim is promoting cultural and economic development at the periphery of Madrid and transforming an indeterminate, abstract, desert and uninhabited peripheral territory, into a real, sheltered, playful and productive landscape.
In addition, tourism in Spain, as an economic sector within the service sector, accounts for 10% of GDP of the country’s economy and therefore presents itself as a strong potential for growth and development. Given such potential and the fact that Spain is one of the main tourist destinations worldwide, LRMA aims to promote the territory’s resources identified as obsolete and defend the local identity establishing the necessary relationships between this sector ( services) and the rest. In this way, it aims to develop that economy linked to the local identity, generating a coexistence of economies and resources.
This plan aims to set the legislative framework for the creation and management of LRMA in Madrid, which is defined as a productive and leisure ring for the city (…).
[Excerpt from the Plan of the Madrid periphery for the development of the free zone ring La Ruta Más Astuta (or The Smartest Route) (PdRMA)]
5 The project
1. Origin
The project is based on the identification of the two sides of the peripheral post crisis landscapes in Madrid: on one hand, abandonment; on the other hand, landscape potential; both identified in the unfinished and paralyzed PAUs (urban development projects) as a result of the economic crisis, but also identified in other nearby peripheral sites (poles of attraction); that create a ring around the capital.
2. Laws
The basis of the project is presented as a urban development plan (PdRMA). It’s total area covers 4,000 ha along an annular route of 80 km with a varying width between 500 and 1000 m around Madrid. It states a series of rules, strategies and modes of intervention that can be summarized in 9 points and located on a legislative map. Subsequently, a series of evolutionary hypotheses are visualized and developed according to the PdRMA.
3. The Objects
In order to visualize the future hypothetical developments, a series of physical structures are designed as part of a technical catalogue.
4. Hypothetical developments
Based on the previous points, two hypothetical future scenarios are visualized: one in a 30-year time, and the other in a 60-year time. In the first one, the basic infrastructure is settled according to the PdRMA, and the historical uses of the land are reimplemented. LRMA becomes an urban platform where recreational and productive activities interact with each other.
In the second hypothesis, the Route explodes. Uses and activities overlap with each other to achieve the maximum disorder within its boundaries.
Communication: The Magazine

Credits

The Smartest Route.

Author:

Leire Calvillo and Ramón Cuesta

2016

La entrada The Smartest Route aparece primero en unfinished.es.

Recycling Almar

moon — Sun, 01 May 2016 02:05:19 +0000

Build

To make or become stronger or more intense.

“The path of temporality would barely leave more trace than aging flesh if it was not useful to nourish our relationship with space”, – writes Emilio Lledó. He clarifies that it is here where man has managed to capture its presence in the real world, as well as language giving form and content to the ideal world. Our presence leaves its mark; a footprint that breathes more slowly. It follows its own beat even if the housing bubble burst, dragging standards and evicting functions, as in Almar, the old factory building of ceramic material. The once gleaming industrial infrastructure has become obsolete.
The factory is located at a strategic point for territorial recovery. It is part of a communications system connecting two existing routes in the Vallès: the biological corridor and greenway. Traces that already suggest the binding intention of the land. The proposal is the connection of the two natural parks of Collserola and Sant Llorenc del Munt by a cycling network that complements the existing forest and agricultural area. Resistance and defence against urban sprawl by its own fabric. Time suggests the need to continue over the indelible mark of speculative actions of the territory. Although the past will always be ours, it is no longer what it was. Inevitably, a new perspective arises that changes the sequence of actions. Among injecting and reconverting, there are an infinite amount of actions possible. While the first speaks about osmosis between the old and the new; the second offers us the past as material for kick-starting future possibilities. Warehouses are studied from various levels to propose an infrastructure that can grow as needed. Meanwhile, the action is concentrated on a narrow strip, allowing the effect to multiply. The prefabricated concrete structure of the original warehouses is reinforced for the new ramp that descends, defining a space that will become the central atrium of the project.
We can not control the effects of time but we can limit the decay by finding the true nature of the materials. In Almar, our accomplices are now topography, warehouses and clay. Soil, already transformed since it is also a clay source, had an industrial value that the proposal uses to place a bike park. The warehouses are considered a disposable material once the activity for which they were conceived disappears. They are the fossilized imprint for the future. Time as matter is forgiving and unifying. It does not let us forget but allows us to move forward. Clay is a pact with it, end and beginning. With the material stock left without output, we will build new volumes. The cosmopolitan nature of the proposal for Almar is the ability to fluctuate between new and known. A previously imperceptible link between their fragmented qualities that lets new life arise. Colonizing or building is to choose between invasion or respect. Build is not a dirty word. It lives sheltered in its inviolable definition, which speaks about strength and intensity. So happens always, someone holds out a hand in a gesture that is not appreciated in this moment of time, but it will last longer than we could imagine. Building is a verb that has spent years seeking refuge, and now descends slowly the ramp of Almar or, unaware of the disaster surrounding it, pedals over the old quarry.

Text: Paula Bozalongo

Credits

Recycling Almar

Authors:
Juan Moreno Romero, Siddartha Rodrigo Clua y Francesco Miele

2016

La entrada Recycling Almar aparece primero en unfinished.es.

Eco Techno Hub

moon — Sun, 01 May 2016 02:04:52 +0000

Placing architecture in its ecological framework, reveals the various networks to which it belongs and retrieves a more complete cultural dimension, becoming a quasi-object, an hybrid inhabitant of the Ecosphere.
The old sewage treatment plant (1965) is now a nature reserve located within the protected space of the sheep track and the Guadalix River basin. The construction of a new treatment plant after the population’s growth in the 80s turned this plant obsolete, and since the 90s it works as a nursery for the regional government reforestation plans. This place is also used for environmental education activities for public and private entities. Its demolition was discarded for both economic and ecological reasons, since rehabilitating saves resources and extending its life, reduces its ecological footprint.
Eco TechnoHub is a phase of inevitable entropic continuous transformation process to which every human work is subject; it celebrates this transformation and gets incorporated into it, recognizing itself as an active part. From a renewed awareness and an inclusive attitude, architecture is conceived beyond its disciplinary autonomy to produce an artifact sensitive to its environmental impact.
EcoTechnoHub is a prototype that shows the advantages of creative reuse (Upcycling) of the built environment, making it useful, educational and accessible to the public. It strengthens and enhances the ecological and educational agenda of the current nursery, implementing simple operations that place value on this infrastructure, formed by the ‘bacterial filter bed’ tank and the underground deposit.
The proposal results from emptying the infrastructure and inserting new components, revealing and conditioning spaces designed not to be inhabited.
[OUT]: Emptying the tank reveals an air-and-natural-light-filled space. The filtering volcanic gravel is spread across the site as a pavement. Emptying the underground deposit reveals a dark, deep and compartmentalized space, suitable for exhibitions and projections. Sludge is used as fertilizaer and water for irrigation.
[IN]: A light umbrella-shaped structure is inserted with 2 tensioned membranes, solidary with the bicycle-wheel roof. A network of cables ties the roof to the tank’s perimeter, serving as its ballast and providing support for climbing plants. The mast supports the roof and concentrates the technology for harnessing renewable energy (geothermal, wind, sun) required to operate the Hub. It also supports the spiral stair communicating the underground with the lookout point; a tunnel of concrete rings is inserted to provide access to the subterranean deposit and to a new gridded floor, on which visitors will be suspended to experience its depth. The new access provides flexibility of use and management, allowing schedules and activities.
EcoTechnoHub is self-sufficient and didactic: it consumes less power than it generates, and makes use of it as part of its environmental education program. It is a place where communities and ecosystems will be related, assembling neighbors and visitors to the National Park, sheep flocks and new forests born in the nursery. It is a support for life and promoter of biodiversity.
EcoTecnoHub is the result of ReAssembling –as a means for architectural invention- an existing infrastructure and a new light structure, obsolete and current technologies, inert and living matter.
EcoTecnoHub integrates infrastructure and architecture, communities and ecosystem, landscape and peasantry.

Credits

EcoTechnoHub: ReAssembling and Upcycling of an obsolete urban infrastructure

Authors:
Diego García-Setién + Silvia Sánchez

Team:
Gonzalo Used, Ignacio Prieto, Diego Acón, Estrella Juárez, Alfonso Sáenz; Engineeering: Calter Ingeniería (Juan C. Arroyo, Carlos Ríos, Elia Mª Pérez) y Buró de Textiles (Javier Tejera y Marian Marco); Energy: Isofoton (Ramiro Caballero), Uptive (Álvaro Ibáñez), Dhara (Daniel Cotillas), Salher (Borja Sánchez), FCC (Santiago Morales), CESPA (Ignacio Archilla), Canal YII (Valverde Agüí)

2016

La entrada Eco Techno Hub aparece primero en unfinished.es.

Landscapes in Ruin

moon — Sun, 01 May 2016 02:03:30 +0000

As a result of the land speculation in the latest years, there has been an enormous destruction of the landscape in which we dwell. This speculation has affected tourism specially with the massive construction of hotels at the tropical coast of Granada, and it has created a landscape filled with out of scale buildings that completely spoil it, as in Almuñecar.
Numerous buildings of this kind have not been finished and they have become premature ruins that are a part of a landscape that needs to be recomposed.
This empty skeletons allow us to imagine beyond what they would have become if they had been completed by thinking of time, of how they will look and how they incorporate to their surroundings. Places that foretell the future of a city, a city with a past, but whose present times are also its history.
In this context, it is about looking for a project that reconciles the most characteristic elements of the landscape with the new needs and necessities of the present to achieve the integration, not only at its closest ambit, but also in its whole environment. The local vegetation, its agricultural landscape and its crops and fruits are taken as elements to make a project, a garden.
The ruin are placed at the edge of an old road, at the town’s uppermost part, in a neighborhood of small houses and two story chalets.
It is thought as a multifunctional program which can create connections between the ruin and the neighborhood but also with the town and the farmland.
First, it is created a path among gardens, parks and orchards that allow us to create the connection between this garden and the others. The making of this new route makes the adequation of the roads amidst farmlands a necessity, so roads would become of public usage. In exchange, the farmers collective would have a place in the building’s uses program, through the creation of a market place of fruits and vegetables where they could sell their products without intermediaries.
Second, a local shop in the neighborhood is willing to move into this new structure. It is a gardening center that, due to the lack of space and this new possibility of visibility and accessibility improvement, would transfer its business to the ruin because it has better access by its positioning at the edge of the road.
Finally, it is presented a new form of temporary, collective and changing accommodation inside the ruin to incorporate tourism into the program. It is about a high-rise camping-hotel where the rooms are immersed in the garden’s vegetation.
It is a synthetic proposal between ecology, production, tourism, leisure and trade understood as a new way of integrating the mistakes produced by a system based of the speculation.

Credits

Landscapes in Ruin. Modern ruin

Author:
Gádor Potenciano Enciso

2016

La entrada Landscapes in Ruin aparece primero en unfinished.es.

Displaced typologies

moon — Sun, 01 May 2016 02:02:02 +0000

Spanish suburbs are a monotonous landscape of abandoned concrete structures. At a time when there is once again a demand for burial grounds far away from the city, interest in these premature ruins has been increasing: would it be possible to recycle these empty shells by transforming them into cemeteries?
The proposed project understands that the deterioration of such buildings is an intrinsic element of the operation. The buildings will be encased in an outer layer made from debris found nearby, built from recycled wire mesh and corrugated bars. Coffins and funerary urns will be placed gradually into the skeleton of the building following a particular pattern that will ensure the even distribution of the weight over each floor. The structures of the abandoned buildings, built to support 2 KN/m2 according to the Spanish Technical Building Code, would eventually collapse. A huge pile of debris would ultimately bury the building as if it were an enormous modern tumulus.
In 1984 Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós won a competition to replace and extend the old Igualada Cemetery. In the proposal, “Miralles gave time factor an instrumental role, since it allows people to imagine the growth of the foliage and tree trunks until the gap is closed up; at that moment the whole cemetery would disappear, turning into a huge communal grave with a green carpet posing as a discreet gravestone covering. In the end, the cemetery will once again (…) be underground: one sole grave recaptured, occupied by vegetation, thus achieving the long-awaited return to the earth.”
The Cortijo de las Colonias estate is part of the scenery in Barranco de Víznar. The remains of an old mill and two pools shape a landscape dotted with olive trees. A staggered, gleaming path leads us to the old pool. The last stone looks twisted compared to the others. Water flows over the words of what appears to be a poem. Architect Carmen Moreno Álvarez’s minimal intervention in that tragic enclave makes it possible to follow Federico García Lorca’s final steps. It is easy to imagine that in many years, similar feelings will be rekindled by someone discovering a little gap on the brink of closing up in the outskirts of Igualada.
After many years of operation, the landfill site in Vall d’en Joan was closed down. In 1999, a team of architects from Battle i Roig Arquitectes developed a system by which they intended to totally seal off the dumping site. Through the recycling of debris, the project created several platforms and paths that provided access to the Parque Natural del Garraf. By 2010 the landfill had been completely reintegrated into the landscape.
The successful project in El Garraf, as well as the poetic and forthcoming sentiments felt by walkers in the outskirts of Igualada, serve as a catalyst for reproducing these experiences in the thousands of abandoned structures around the country: the outer layer made of debris covering the skeletons of the buildings, put in place at the start of the procedure, would cover the grave once the building had collapsed. Given time and the growth of vegetation, the elevations that would emerge in the outskirts of the cities would be covered up, creating a wide green belt of up to 200 metres in which the construction of new buildings would be prohibited. The mountain of debris would become a protection tool against future urban growth and development thanks to the displacement of the house-temple-grave vector.

Credits

Displaced typologies

Author:
Pablo Blázquez Jesús

Project team:
Jorge Iván Guerrero Ramírez, Yaiza Sellés Lloret

2016

La entrada Displaced typologies aparece primero en unfinished.es.

United territories of Failand

moon — Sun, 01 May 2016 02:01:19 +0000

In 2016, the international community takes in consideration every urban plot ever developed and then forgotten, every unfinished construction, all the sumptuous buildings in our
cities that were never used and, in general, every territory failed in an urban, ecological, economical or social way. We conclude that all these territories have reached the
limit of a mistaken and corrupt process and therefore find themselves on a position of irreversible paralysis. The only possible solution is to explore completely new approaches, a path away from our current system. That is why the microstate of Failand is created, a new virtual statement to gather and consolidate all the failed territories as one, under a common national identity , with the purpose of making the conflict visible and finding collective sollutions from an unprejudiced , decontextualized and global perspective.
Estate Basis
1// Those territories that acomplish any of the failure requirements especified on the document “Diplomatic Relations” will be annexed to the microstate by being included on the “member territories archive”. Failand is both divided and centralised.
2// The appointed land properties will be demarcated and registered as “Territories of Failand”, and as such, will be subject to the laws of this new homeland, remaining temporarily away from corruption and speculation in search for a new development proposal.
3// The Reinsertion Commission of Failand and the international community will be responsible for recommending suitable proposals for the development of the member territories, which once evaluated and subjected to internal suffrage, will culminate in the transfer of the proposed territories that will no longer appear on the website as part of the microstate Failand. Failand intends to be a judgmental tool that reflects a complex urban and social situation of its moment, leaving a solid evidence of political mismanagement, demographic movements, different urban plans and their consequences. The map of Failand is in constant change: it will expand in case of the emergence of new urban failures, which must be immediately annexed; and decrease whenever effective solutionsare taken to prevent paralysisCustoms and Diplomatic Relations Failand will proceed to the immediate annexation of the territories that fulfil some of the following criteria.
1// Economic/Legal Failure Those territories without planning permission, whose permission has been cut off or stopped. Construction works or urban plans under a legal process because of corruption. Plots of land or building works without the economic feasibility to be taken place in the agreed deadline.
2// Ecological Failure
Pieces of land declared as an ecological or environmental disaster. Those pieces of land burned, poisoned or harmed in some way with the aim of a posible redesignation. Every natural soil where any illegal activitie may have lead into the loss of animal and plant life.
3// Social Failure
Uninhabited or abandoned territories due to a migratory movement from rural to urban cities. Overpopulated territories with some risks and lacking of resources or unhygienic conditions. Every illegal settlement with permanent population.
4// Urban Failure
Developed territories with a lack of adaptation to their surroundings owing to scale issues, urban planning or location. Unfinished construction works whose building techniques may endangered the life of the people nearby. Buildings or facilities that have proved to be unsustainables in long term and have no use nowadays.

Credits

United Territories Of Failand

Authors:
Lucía Andreu Gómez, Ramón Cuesta González-De la Aleja, Clara González Fernández

2016

La entrada United territories of Failand aparece primero en unfinished.es.