200 CONCORDIA HOUSING
by FRPO
Móstoles, Madrid
This small residential building is inserted in a neighborhood built in the 60s and 70s of the last century as the first expansion of the city of Móstoles, in the southern metropolitan area of Madrid. The urban tissue is made up of brick buildings, with small windows and some terraces that are systematically closed by its inhabitants, expanding the interior living area in an inefficient way. To build a residential building in this environment means working, fundamentally, with the façade: its openings, its language, its urban image.
Geometry
The building is located on an almost rectangular plot, respecting a back patio which is shared with the neighboring building. This patio, together with the mandatory street alignment and the maximum height allowed, make up a simple capable volume with a C-shaped floor plan. The floor plan is organized around a core centered on the patio façade, providing three apartments per floor. Following a classic scheme, the day areas are arranged towards the street, grouped in a large square room, and the night areas towards the interior of this patio. The section takes advantage of the maximum height allowed for the ground floors to resolve an awkward situation: these ground floors are generally occupied by dwellings, too exposed to pedestrians. To improve this situation, these apartments rise above the ground, acquiring certain privacy.
Madrid-style balconies
The facade to the street is presented as an abstract canvas on which 28 identical balconies are open. The canvas’s basis is a stone plinth, made of traditional stone mortar, hosting 6 additional openings and the building access. The balconies are thickened in a Madrid-style way, also popular in the historic center of Móstoles: with precast folded steel sheet frames, which add thickness to the opening and unify the window, the window blinds and the balcony’s railing in a single monochrome element, very light and very transparent, which gives character and identity to the whole.
Credits:
Architecture: FRPO: Pablo Oriol, Fernando Rodríguez
Team: Adrián Sánchez Castellano, Francisco Díaz Pozo
Consultants: Axiom Ingeniería, David Marcos Álvarez, GMC Ingeniería
Client: Private
Built Area: 1200 m2
Location: Móstoles, España
Date: 2021
Photography: Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)
Architects: FRPO
+34 912838818
Cea Bermudez 65 8D
28003 Madrid, SPAIN
Pablo Oriol (Madrid 1977) Architect / Partner
He studied architecture at the Madrid Polytechnic ETSAM and at the Architecture College of the Illinois Institute of Technology of Chicago, between 1995 and 2005. He was Cultural Activities Curator for the General Department of Architecture of the Ministry of Public Works for the ETSAM and for the Cervantes Institute between 1999 and 2002. He was part of the redaction team of magazine Arquitectura Viva in 2006.
He is a PhD candidate at the Madrid Polytechnic ETSAM. He is Associate Professor at the Architectural Design Department of the Madrid Polytechnic ETSAM and at the IE School of Architecture.
Fernando Rodríguez (Albacete 1977) Architect / Partner
He studied architecture at the Madrid Polytechnic ETSAM and at the Technische Universität Berlin, between 1995 and 2003. In 2002 he has collaborated in MVRDV (Rotterdam) and has been Invited Critic with Kees Christiaanse at the TU Berlin. He has worked as projects architect for Abalos & Herrerros (Madrid) in 2004.
He is a PhD candidate at the Madrid Polytechnic ETSAM. He is Associate Professor at the Architectural Design Department of the Madrid Polytechnic ETSAM and at the IE School of Architecture.
In 2005 they become founder-associates of Nolaster Oficina de Arquitectura, where they have developed their professional activity until 2007. In 2007 Pablo Oriol and Fernando Rodríguez establish FRPO, as a natural evolution of the work done until the date within Nolaster.
