THE PUBLIC FACE OF PRIVACY
The municipal government of Madrid
Most of the Carabanchel development is designed for the patio-block
building type seen here, full-block structures of five or six stories built
around a central courtyard. The model is an updated of 19th century
city planning in Spain, as exemplified by the 1860 Cerdà Plan for Barcelona.
Units have two exposures, street and courtyard, for cross-ventilation. This
distribution replaces interior access corridors with multiple vertical
circulation cores serving two units per floor. The type also results in
relatively narrow floor slabs (here eight meters wide). A parking garage is
located under the courtyard, which contains a grove of trees and an open area
that lend itself to many uses, from children's games to casual encounters
between neighbors.
Amann, Cánovas and Maruri have added to
this formula the Corbusian amenity of a large outdoor terrace for each unit
that extends across its full depth, an idea that first appeared in Corb's 1922
project for the Inmeubles-Villas. Maruri comments, "Le Corbusier was
searching for a way to translate the advantages of a single-family house to the
city apartment – garden, views, orientation." Cánovas
adds, "It's a flexible, intermediate space that receives light, shade,
breezes and even a bit of rain, an area of transition between the apartment and
the city."
The terraces break up the monolithic mass of the building, emphasizing
instead its collective character; it reads as a beehive rather than a block. To
underscore the individual identity of units, the architects clad them in
corrugated steel sheet in various vivid colors, distributed seemly at random.
Stairs and elevators are integrated in the metal sheathing, and all
exterior-facing floor-to-ceiling windows are hidden behind shutters of the same
material (the large glazed areas of the living area open on the outdoor
terrace). As a result, each apartment resembles a brightly-colored shipping
container placed on the continuous exposed floor slabs. The
"containers" are staggered in layout from one floor to another, while
the regularly-spaced elevator towers on the roof mark a different rhythm, and
establish the vertical axis of each circulation core, subtly holding the
composition together. The architects compare these containers to the body of a
car, and they are one of the few elements of the project that were
prefabricated in-shop.
Unit layout follow the strict norms for subsidized housing established
by Spanish legislation. The architects have zoned wet areas with tile floors
–baths, kitchen and dining area– along one wall of the unit. The living area
and bedrooms on the other side, with dark wood floors, are oriented for the
best possible exposure. There are 40 three-bedroom units, 21 with four bedrooms
or more (located in the block's corners), and 21 with two bedrooms (on the top
floor, with slightly wider terraces).
The patio-block type has both advantages and limitations. In commercial
projects it tends to convert buildings into private islands surrounded by
underused residential streets, where commercial activity is sequestered to
distant shopping centers. Amann, Cánovas and Maruri
have created a bright point of attraction amid this anomie, while the
individual terraces constitute an important improvement on the type. They bring
a much-needed permeability to the public space of the central courtyard. They can
also be seen as a modern interpretation of the traditional Madrid street
balcony, and in this sense are actually quite Baroque and theatrical in their
essential role of giving individual privacy a public face.
