126 apartments in Madrid
This residential complex, which houses 126 apartments, seeks innovation in type and form through the front façades terracing and the combination of residential and commercial uses. This idea is shown in two primarily longitudinal parallel buildings organized in thirteen storeys. The use of the public spaces is enhanced by the fluid communication between rooms inside each apartment and between the outside common areas located in the middle of the two buildings. A visual relationship is created between this patio and each private apartment through the latter’s large terraces, which serve as a hinge between exterior and interior.
The project consists on a 126-apartment residential complex located at Valdebebas (Madrid, Spain), a neighborhood which has lived a great real estate development in the last decade and thus serves as sample of the latest architectural proposals in the field of collective housing.
Our design seeks to promote the area’s urban activity and type complexity through the combination of residential and diversely scaled service industry uses. The ground floor is filled with a large and unobstructed commercial surface, which serves as the basis for the first floor, which houses twelve smaller stores. This storey serves as a formal and use separation between the ground floor and the residential storeys located between the second floor and the penthouses. This elevation serves as acoustic insulation and improves the apartments’ natural ventilation and sun exposure. The private space is complemented by common sport and leisure facilities.
The 9,460sqm plot contains two buildings that have been understood as a sole unit. The first and larger of them, which houses 78 apartments in eleven floors, obtains its form from the volume extraction of a perfect parallelepiped. This decision, in addition of giving a strong identity to the building, allows the creation of many sunny rooftop terraces and the volume reservation for the second smaller building, which houses 48 apartments in its seven storeys.
The final scaled high block shape of the buildings creates a hybrid type somehow characterized as something between an isolated linear block and a high-rise building.
This project has allowed us to investigate the type possibilities of contemporary dwellings. The complex combines apartments from two to four sleeping-rooms, promoting thus a richer social occupation than other developments of the area. In addition, the public spaces of each apartment have been prioritized on top of the more private areas, granting especially large areas to living rooms and terraces created by the front façades volume subtraction.
Spatial communication and fluidity has also been a fundamental aspect when organizing the apartments. We have sought to boost multiple visual and physical connections between kitchens, living-rooms and terraces.
From a technical point of view, we chose to solve the façades with prefabricated GRC panels, which allowed a high quality and aesthetically pleasing surface finish. Furthermore, this decision also eased the high-rise phase of the construction, which faced the challenge of Madrid’s airport proximity.
