Wasteland-scapes

TEAM PORTRAIT

VIDEO (by the team)

INTERVIEW
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1. How do you define the main issue of your project in relation with the theme “Living Cities Imagining architecture taking care of the milieus”? And in which way do you think your project can contribute to an ecological and/or social evolution?
The main purpose of our project is to preserve and enhance the empty spaces in this area of Carabanchel, an extremely dense peripheral district of Madrid that is completely removed from the network of green areas of the city. So much so that, the only pervious grounds in the area correspond to vacant lots –the scars of decades of second-class planning and collective indifference. The project aims to turn this wasteland into landscape. To achieve this goal, the built and the void establish a new kind of agreement, whereby the essential traits of wasteland –informality, fertility, strangeness, ambiguity, fluctuation- become guidelines to transform them.

2. How did the issues of your design and the questions raised by the site mutation meet?
Many of the vacant lots in the area are of public property. In Spanish, we use the word ‘patrimony’ to speak both of property and heritage. Interestingly, the municipality makes use of the first meaning: to them, the lots are an economic asset because of its potential for being developed. To us, however, the lots read as heritage: a unique kind of public space whose main potential is to remain empty, pervious, fertile, accessible. It is in this twofold interpretation where the design and the site may find an interesting friction.

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