From ideas to process-projects
Europan 14 - Madrid - Plazas (ES)
« Common Ground »
Project strategy family:
- Ecological connections
- Inclusive morphologies
- Inventive typologies
- Reinterpreted heritage
- Urban articulations
Process category:
- Direct order processes
- Competitive processes
- Co-creative processes
- Collaborative processes
- Participative processes
- Participation of the Living processes
- Adaptative legal framework processes
Authors: furiistudio (Diego Martín Sánchez, Noemí Gómez Lobo, ES)
Client(s): Madrid City Council, Association of Merchants los Mostenses
Dates: 2017 - 2023
Driving forces: TEAM
Site
Madrid - Plazas (ES)
SCALE L/S SIZE 82ha / from 0.4 to 0.7ha
In the back streets around the Gran Via, 6 squares were proposed to develop a new, more sustainable Mobility Model and a new strategy for public spaces to make them more accessible, inclusive and to produce a substantial improvement in the quality of urban space. These are empty spaces that show signs of spatial, economic and social degradation, due in part to their transformation during the 70s and 80s into roofs for underground public car parks.
Awarded Idea
Project - Ideas
Common Ground
The proposal focuses in how to re-appropriate the underground parking, going from car-architecture to people-architecture. Designed for the car, the parking is a typology that has very specific architectural features. Potential operations are suggested to enable basic habitability conditions. This set aims at being a bottom-up tool for negotiation with citizens, municipality and other actors.
Understanding productivity not only from a functionalist point of view but regarding from a social perspective, the project maps the civic tissue of the area. These resilient spaces make Madrid more livable enabling reproductive activities such as caring, repairing or educating. The result is a publicly managed infrastructure that incorporates programmable spaces by citizens in constant readjustment.
Project Strategy
Family: Urban articulations
A REAL PUBLIC SPACE AROUND THE COVERED MARKET
After the competition, the city of Madrid wanted to work with the two runner-up teams. It gave a "minor contract" to Furii studio for the design of the Plaza de los Mostenses, one of the 6 squares proposed to the competition.
The work developed by the Europan team focused on a feasibility study including a detailed analysis, a mobility and sunlight study, the identification of potential points of intervention, as well as three questionnaire surveys for the market traders' association, in order to better understand the dynamics of the site.
The central idea of the competition to transform the underground space for productive uses was quickly compromised, as the parking spaces - although publicly owned - are under private concession until 2028. Interventions in this sense were therefore developed as a future phase, namely a logistics platform for the market.
In the short-term, the project has therefore focused more on the covered market and its adjoining public spaces, transforming the current residual space for cars into a real public square, and making the current public fresh produce market visible throught a work with local artists, thus contributing to the identity of the square.
However, the change of municipal team in 2019 and the Covid-19 situation slowed down the process. In summer 2020, the municipality asked the team to advance the project with new plans and documents, defining details that would make it easier to build in order to include it in this year's budget.
The municipality has continued the Plaza de los Mostenses project without the Europan team, commissioning an engineering office to carry out the detailed design of the project on the basis of the Europan team proposal, the construction documents and the construction supervision.
The square was completed in 2023, transforming the space around the market into a true public space without cars.
Process
Category(ies): Direct order processes, Participative processes
Direct order processes
Following the competition, the city of Madrid commissioned the team to design one of the six squares in the competition (Plaza de los Mostenses). The team submitted a feasibility study with a detailed analysis, which the city implemented without the team.
Participative processes
To design the square’s redevelopment plan, the team worked closely with the merchants’ association to gather their expectations and needs and incorporate them into the project.
