FACT SHEET

Title:Vallecas 51
Location:Vallecas, Madrid, Spain
Year:2006
Program:residential
Status:competition
Team:Josean Ruiz Esquiroz
Nacho Ruiz Allén

TEXT

The project reflects on the dialectic between individual identities versus collective housing. We
are faced with this tension in every mass production industry. On the one hand, the price of
land and the sociability of human beings, require us to make more dense and compact the
urban fabric. On the other hand, private consumers try to differentiate themselves through the
goods which satisfy their desires and, in a way, create their personal identity. To reduce the
cost of mass production, we use serial fabrication, standardization, types and modulation. But
here, in Vallecas 51, to create “difference” we have used greenhouse-galleries, which located
at the south façade fly as a checkerboard, and are cut by a symmetrical third degree
mathematical surface. We allow each owner to select the chromatic interior of each gallery.
The units within the block have 1, 2 or 3 bedrooms. All of them have at least one greenhouse
gallery and cross ventilation. Bathrooms and kitchens are grouped in two bands. In the living
rooms, there is a storage filter with an L shape, which unfolds different support furniture, as if
it were a Swiss Army knife.