51 Accommodations in La Rinconada (Sevilla) | Lourdes Bueno, Luis Valero, architects
Accommodations for young and old. 1
Complex hybrids of room programs are being tested as an alternative to old patterns of residence.
Working conditions in which they inserted the production of architecture is one of the keys to take into account if we are to achieve the best results for the city and its inhabitants. This assertion, which sounds like a truism in the interior of the architecture, it is not often understood as something needed by the whole of society today, nor by their leaders and institutions. A large part of the responsibility for this lies with the architects and their own representative institutions, which are normally aligned with a state of affairs in which the user of architecture-the inhabitant of the same-is always at the end, as mere passive recipient of their products.
However, there are initiatives in our cultural environment concern in their proposals to resolve this situation: little-known architects but with an excellent job both in the outcome of their proposals as to adapt it to the needs of its inhabitants. Often act as covering the fields of management, design, production or social action and in this web of responsibilities, often misunderstood by the promoters of this architecture are able to fit their projects to bring them to surprising solutions.
This is true of the social initiative launched in the nearby town of San Jose de la Rinconada by SXXI Rinconada, EMV and the architects who developed it in their professional work: the joint residence for young and old on a subsidized rent of Recent construction, where we see solid evidence of the scope of a test, not always easy to manage, which wants to bring together in one space to residential generations with different needs and expectations, where they share lifestyles and daily efforts in a neighborhood together not entirely alien to our urban culture.
And what architecture proposed for this its authors, Lourdes and Luis Bueno Valero?
In a first decision, which respond to their presence in the city, the 51 apartments / studios are carried on two floors (the low for the older and higher for young people) to the perimeter of an elongated rectangular plot that offers more to his side the main street, to construct an image compact and representative while proposing, in the empty interior resulting from this operation, the desired qualifications of an area of sociability and exchange for our times and latitudes.
Thus, avoiding dump all the houses on the same central space to be flown perimeter, there is a game of comings and goings of access to the galleries of the first floor from which signify the entrance to each of the houses and fragment into the courtyard various areas of agreement and relationship that act as a prelude to the room. This, through eyes cross, lights and shadows under the cover semitransparent of requiebros, bridges and steps to dilations, texture of soil, vegetation or colors that identify doors in a clear, for each neighbor, the extent of their housing.
With this support, each house of about 30 square meters, takes the best of functional design and new materials to make an extremely useful and versatile space where they give shelter to such diverse ways of life: the core set of bath water and the kitchen in his front yard at the entrance is equipped with wall lockers and the room is compartments with movable partitions that polycarbonate dilate or closed spaces as the use of every moment, leaving the user the ultimate form of his house.
However, with a very tight economic cost that leads them to rely on an architecture such as atmospheric naked, stripped of sophisticated designs, to characterize the places intermediate between the city and the room. A new area of sociability where to convene the community and an architectural experience that, without concealing his references to the Dutch master Aldo van Eyck, betting on a possible friendly and comfortable life to share with almost one hundred people.
- Article originally published in the Journal of Seville on February 13, 2008 and ceded for publication on this website by its authors, Felix of the Church and Jose Ramon Moreno [ again ]
