Dozen Doors
Renovation for a co-living in the Tetuan neighborhood
by Gon Architects

Shared living resources has become a common practice in recent decades in the social group from the age of 18 onwards. This sector of the population, basically students and travelers, finds in this form of shared domesticity an alternative to family life. A space and a time where collective action is developed, which favors both economy and sociability, compatible with the desire of people to become independent. And all in the same building.
dozen doors is the result of the transformation of an early 21st century single-family house with five floors above ground and a basement, located in the multicultural neighborhood of Tetuán in Madrid, into a co-living where 12 university students, coming from all over the world to do a master’s degree, live together for a period of one year in the capital.

The project is an urban interior structure, dedicated to accommodate people united by similar life positions that favor coexistence, while at the same time leaving space for the sphere of individuality. To this end, the general organization of the built volume, conceived both in plan and in section, is articulated around a staircase strategically placed in the center of the building, which, while establishing the vertical circulations of the co-living, distributes and organizes horizontally both the common and private spaces.

From the collective point of view, there is a diversity of indoor and outdoor communal spaces distributed throughout the building, where different types of equipment are shared. From the communal kitchen, dining room or living room where to watch the FIFA World Cup or the latest music video trends on the ground floor, or the games room in the basement, where the laundry room is also located, to the south-facing terraces where to sunbathe overlooking the Madrid skyline, on the fourth and fifth floors, passing through each of the landings on each level, where, next to the lockers, more unexpected interactions can take place. In short, these public spaces are projected as indeterminate places that facilitate encounters and conversation.

The private rooms, unlike the common spaces, are projected as variations on the same type, all the same and at the same time different. They are the places where the personal worlds of each student can evolve. They contain, in 10-12m2, all the necessary elements for hygiene (bathroom), rest (bed) and work (study area). The use of color, as in the case of the study area and the bathroom, chosen according to each orientation, serves to differentiate these areas from the rest of the room and hierarchize them spatially.

dozen doors is a residential solution that bets on the quality that this type of housing equipment needs for it to become a focus of coexistence and social dialogue, while demonstrating the flexibility that the house has in order to stop being a space exclusively for the private and also become an arena for the public. A place of social production where different people share spaces, but also moments, resources and activities, which facilitates, in the neighborhood of Tetuán, the construction of an advanced human fabric that increases the cohesion between the people of the neighborhood and those who reside in the co-living.

Credits:
Architecture: gon (Gonzalo Pardo)
Team: Carol Linares, Cristina Ramírez, Laura Argüeso, María Cecilia Cordero, Iván Rando, Kostís Toulgaridis, Celia Urbano.
Client: Private
Built area: 325 m2
Construction EDIAR SLU
Location: Madrid, Spain
Date: 2022
Photography: Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)

Architects: gon architects

www.gon-architects.com
info@gon-architects.com

Calle San Lucas 6, 2º D
28004, Madrid, SPAIN

gon is a Madrid-based architecture and design office headed by Gonzalo Pardo since 2014. His practice focuses on research and development of singular architectural projects of different scales ranging from urban planning to buildings to interior construction.

The common denominator of his works is a playful, experimental, critical and optimistic view of the contemporary. In a constant dialogue based on observation and details, his interest focuses on the creative processes of architectural design and construction, as well as the role of mediation and communication of architecture as fundamental vehicles for transforming the world into a place more sustainable, worthy and free.

Gonzalo Pardo is an architect from ETSAM (School of Architecture of Madrid) since 2007, and has a PhD in Architecture since 2016. His thesis “Body and House: Towards the contemporary domestic space from the transformations of the kitchen and bathroom in the West” obtained the outstanding Cum Laude rating, and received for it the 2016-2017 Extraordinary Doctoral Thesis Award and an honorable mention in the XI call for the Arquia Foundation Thesis Contest.

Since 2007 he teaches as a visiting professor at different universities and institutions, in subjects with the common denominator of being linked to the project, as in the European Institute of Design (IED), in Madrid; the Illiois Institute of Technology (IIT), in Chicago, United States; Lund University, in Sweden, and the Master in Collective Housing (MCH), in Madrid. He has been a professor in the Master in Architectural Communication (MaCA) and in the Master in Advanced Projects (MPAA) of the Department of Architectural Projects at ETSAM.

He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Architectural Projects at ETSAM, where he teaches undergraduate projects. Member of the Hypermedia research group: Communication Workshop and Architectural Configuration, he directs doctoral theses as a teacher and researcher, as well as numerous End of Master’s Projects (TFM) and Final Degree Projects (TFG).

He has been deputy curator of the Spanish pavilion at the 16th Venice Biennale, and since 2000 he has obtained 41 national and international awards, including the first prize for the remodeling of the AZCA block in Madrid in 2007; the second prizes in the international Skyscraper contests, in New York, and Velux, in Denmark, in 2007; COAM award in 2014 for the Paréntesis curator cycle, and honorable mention in the Europan 14 competition at the Barcelona location. His projects and built work have been widely disseminated in national and international, physical and virtual media.