I don't know how I came up with the phrase "Life is a Drawing, Capture it". It's confusing isn't it?
I did this proposal for a friend of mine who told me he needed a commercial proposal for the hear hygiene brand AudiBaby. Then, as usual, nothing happened.
Memory:
The expansion of Arana house in the Ribera de Manzanares is a complex project due to a law of conservation of buildings with a certain typology established years after the making of the house. That means that any alteration in the House has to be done now with the actual normative and basically the full house would have to be be modified in the case of intervene on it. That is the reason why the house has not suffered any renewal work from the outside for a long time.
However, the needs of the inhabitants in the house have change through the years, what makes an expansion inevitable. One of the sons, who is a Star Wars figures and models passionate is looking for a bigger room to keep on collecting stuff. From the start, the decision of putting a container in the flat roof of the house was an idea that seemed to work. This kind of industrial element doesn't try to mimic with the house but with the cinematic imaginary that filmmaker George Lucas created decades ago. The contrast with the house helped to emphasize the idea of an alien ship that rest in the roof.
As the extension is just a prefabricated element that is put on the roof without the need of mayor work, the problem of having a license to build is avoided. The façade of the house itself is not modified and in the worst case scenario, if the element has to be removed, this is a task that can be done easily.
The user can access to this container elevated in narrow columns from the terrace and from his old room through a spiral stairs that connect both spaces. The interior is completely diaphanous so the user can organize the inside of the room depending on his needs thanks to articulated screens. The floor works also as a container so that there is no need of extra furniture to keep things and space is liberated for other purposes. The fact that the container is elevated makes it possible to use the space bellow during all year long, keeping the user away of rain and sun and making a perfect spot to rest while looking at the river from the top of the house.
Intervention in Preciados street in the center of Madrid. The idea is to make personal capsules that came out from ground so that peasants could hide, rest, read, sleep or whatever they feel like doing in that moment. A moment of solitude in the middle of the crowded city.
To make this video I used the footage recorded by Ricardo Santonja in the architecture school drawing classes. I digitally altered the images to produce the burned black and white style and I accompanied them with the fabulous soundtrack from Katsuhiro Otomo's AKIRA film composed by Shoji Yamashiro. The video pretends to be a dialogue between this piece of music that I love and this bunch of reused footage.
Memory:
A skyscraper in the middle of Castellana, with surrounding buildings not higher that ten stories. The proposal consists on a building clearly differentiated in two pieces. One expressed as a huge concrete element with not many apertures on it that has the same height as the surrounding buildings and a second piece, that grows from there, consisting on a perimeter structure that leaves a full glass façade behind. This structure would also work as a brisolei.
This external differentiation of the concrete piece in the bottom and a lightweight structure mounted as a later enlargement is reflected on the interior of the building. The first opaque part is where conferences and reunion rooms are located and behind the big glass façade is where offices are located.
The building is organized inspired by Richard Rogers Lloyd's building were service and served spaces clearly differ. Vertical communication such as stairs and elevators are in the east façade, while north façade keeps all the installations. The goal is to keep a square plant as versatile and free as possible.
It was our first year in Madrid ArchitectureSchool and Elena, Cristian, Alba and me end up teamed up to make a short film for DAI class. I believe this this is the first time any of us worked making a video. We managed to borrow a JVC miniDV camcorder, but end up editing on VHS... then we played the VHS tape back on a TV and re-record it again on miniDV, to finally import this footage to Adobe Premiere and add the music. We had a great time.
