Vallecas goes Pop

Today I renew my collaboration with the cultural supplement Babelia of the Spanish daily El País. The story is a report on the latest public housing in the new Madrid district of Vallecas. The development has given a new generation of Madrid architects the opportunity to build, many for the first time. Mid-decade trends (when the projects were first awarded in competition) are seen in a new, post-crisis light.

The full story appears on their web page:

Vallecas será pop
Babelia, Number 978, pages 18-19.
El País, Saturday, August 21, 2010.

Los "árboles de aire", plazas de sombra envueltas en mallas verdes de vegetación, ocupan los cruces del bulevar, cerrando vistas que en el resto del ensanche son demasiado abiertas. Son los únicos lugares en la zona donde se oye el canto de los pájaros. Alrededor se sitúan algunos de los proyectos más atrevidos de la EMVS, con acabados de planchas metálicas galvanizadas, texturas corrugadas y colores de una intensidad pop. Es una auténtica utopía de la joven arquitectura madrileña, apenas un cruce de calles, como las utopías suelen ser.

Above: Housing by Paredes Pino Architects.
Photo: DC

Black Prince

Estudio Entresitio's subsidized rental housing tower in the Vallecas Ensanche of Madrid is the subject of my latest article in Bauwelt: Wider den postmodernen Städtebau (Against Postmodern Urbanism), in Bauwelt 15.10, April 16, 2010, pages 26 - 31.

The tower was built by the Municipal Housing Authority of Madrid, and is probably the best of some 40 public housing projects completed or underway in the development.

It is an ambivalent monument, offering no illusions of utopia or mythic triumph, no narcotic thrill or calming anesthesia. Could it be proposing instead a new, post-Matrix realism, in which the precise, sensual facts of the architectural object attempt to shake us out of our media reveries and back into the present fallen world?

Photo © Roland Halbe, used with permission.
Two more pictures from the Bauwelt webpage.

Look here for a video of the building made by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza for the architects.

News: Toyo Ito Mud Baths in Limbo

The Spanish newspaper El País published a brief account on April 1st of the lamentable state of Toyo Ito's Relaxation Park in Torrevieja, Alicante (in Spanish).

The project, for a series of three shell-like pavilions for mud spa therapies beside Torrevieja's shore-front lagoon, was featured in the 2006 On-Site show on Spanish architecture at New York's Museum of Modern Art. It is being promoted by the municipal government. But the nation's Coastal Authority ordered the project halted for violating laws prohibiting new waterfront development. While the city seeks approval for a revised plan, the single pavilion built so far has been vandalized and is being occupied by "temporary refugees".

Ito has recently completed two towers for Barcelona's Porta Fira Fair complex in L´Hospitalet, a project for subsidized housing in the provincial capital of Logroño, and the first phase of the Gavia Water Park in Vallecas, Madrid, according to an interview with the architect by Anaxtu Zabalbeascoa published in El País on March 27th.

More project information, images on the Alicante journal ViA Arquitectura webpage (my thanks to them for the photo above). Early views of the Porta Fira towers can be found on Designboom.