Housing block in street Andres Mellado

Place: Madrid
Date: 1994
Design/direction: Eduardo Delgado Orusco

This project arose without charge. The absence of work led me to find lots with little use in the neighborhood where I lived and to try a business that consisted of exploring their possibilities and later presented it to the owners.

In this case it was a place next to the church of Santa Rita, in the Madrid street of Andres Mellado, which was occupied by a mechanical workshop surrounded by medianeras denouncing the situation.

This type of work, without a client, we could say, allowed a great freedom: thus I plated the whole building around a circular patio that, nevertheless, offered a magnificent use of the lot. It is evident the debt of this exercise with the houses in the Calle María Coronel of the Seville team Cruz y Ortiz, although in my case it was a solution with a greater geometric commitment.

The organization of the accesses - both horizontal and vertical - in the same courtyard, which allowed a very refined housing plants, was not understood by the municipal technicians so that the appeal of the proposal was lost in further developments. They are a pity these situations in which the rigidity of the norm or, rather, of those that have to apply them hinders the best architecture possible.