Madrid (ES)

Inhabited milieu's challenges

The city of Madrid proposes the location of Plaza de Almodóvar to the Europan competition as an extraordinary opportunity to revitalize, repair and care for a peripheral neighborhood in the south of our city. It aligns and participates in the urban strategy of the municipality for territorial balance through new local centralities and to face the challenges of climate change. The proposal is included in the Urban Strategy for Economic Activity of the City of Madrid, which includes the strengthening of the creative and cultural content industry as one of the vectors or lever lines of the Recovery Plan for Europe and in the Development Plan of the South and East of Madrid. The proposal of Madrid recognizes and values both the importance of the vibrant cultural ecosystem called ISO -an association of cultural producers that offer diversity and dynamism to the resident population-, as well as the overlapping of the axes of communication and local economic activity of the district. The urban fabric of the Plaza de Almodóvar is a broken and nondescript place, weak in its environmental and landscape components, affected by pass- ing traffic and absent of social interaction. The existence of empty lots and unstimulating public spaces, owned by the municipality, offers a great opportunity, but their physical conditions prevent the consolidation of an active community space. Transformation of public space is configured by three interrelated objectives: to regenerate the quality of daily life through a civic square that contributes to social cohesion and generates identity; recover public space that is now exclusive to private vehicles; and reintro- ducing nature. The square will have as a reference for its reconfiguration the project of two buildings of municipal property and public use, which will exercise the functions of leadership in the activities of the square, seeking an integrating and identity social character, in a safe space.

Questions to the competitors

Madrid is committed to the reflection of young architecture on the core of the Carabanchel district, interested in receiving new contributions on innovative typologies for new mixed-use facilities linked to cultural production, and on the design of inclusive and naturalized public space.
The existence of vacant lots and public spaces without identity in Plaza de Almodóvar and its surroundings constitutes an opportunity to create a new node of peripheral centrality. This node will facilitate urban metabolism by promoting hybridization of uses and will provide answers to the challenges of climate change and social inequality.
The consolidation of an active community space of proximity in the center of the district will contribute to the process of cultural production aimed at social inclusion and the change of social habits related to the climate challenge. The proposal recognizes the importance of the cultural ecosystem of the ISO polygon driven by cultural producers and artists that brings diversity and dynamism to the social structure of the resident population, as well as the need to create new spaces to meet basic needs and promote the development of the local economy. In this sense, it is advocated to open processes of citizen participation to know the different identities that coexist in this area and explore solutions that arouse the greatest consensus.
The enhancement of municipal heritage should give answers to the urban void, incorporating the emerging activities and existing dynamic social agents linked to cultural production, encouraging the participation of the various social identities present.
Madrid considers culture and knowledge as essential goods, which reinforce the value of sustainability and inclusiveness, in an active, open, diverse and participatory society. And the free space and the public services as a great school of coexistence.