Non-Binary House House / Pachon-Paredes

Textual content description supplied by the architects. The pre-existing area was a closely compartmentalized flat with 9 “rooms” distributed in solely 100m². Constructed within the late fifties by the union group of architects (lead by Moreno Barberá, and composed amongst others, by Cano Lasso, De la Joya, or Benlloch La Roda), the 15-story tower-block crowns the start of the present urban-park triumph “Madrid Río”. The tower, positioned in an important restrict for the town, is a part of the “Colonia de San Antonio”, an city experiment, forgotten these days, that supplied a solution to a linear city island surrounded by the Casa de Campo (an unlimited city forest), the M-30 (city motorway), the river and the town heart. The city proposal, inherited from the trendy motion, unfold out alongside the river a number of constructing typologies, mixing pure and constructed areas with an assortment of public providers… making a metropolis and permitting the realm to outlive as a neighborhood these days.

The experimental essence of the proposal was born from a useful lack of definition and an financial limitation. There’s a want for habitats of various natures that may, someway, co-exist both individually or collectively in the identical area, in the identical physique. Working, leisure-sports and home habitats want to remodel, adapt and co-exist in an area that needs to be “NON-BINARY” by power. A set hybrid area is just not required, nevertheless it should have the spacetime capability of adjusting relying on the wants of its customers and the particular contexts, whether or not that is every day, weekly or for lengthy intervals of time. 

Thus, by defining the foundations that create these synergies, the unique construction of the constructing is unveiled. Latent limits are fashioned, with the form of a Latin-cross plan, on account of the structural actuality of the tower typology however negating the unique inner compartmentalization. That is outlined as a “construction” area during which there are not any function-associated areas: front room, ready room, ballroom or yoga studio; wall bars or shelving unit, an workplace or a research; an consuming room or assembly room, a kitchen or woodworking zone, and so forth. Areas will not be heirs of their perform, however of a sequence of circumstances associated to construction, power, time or freedom of interpretation from whoever makes use of, lives, or exploits them. 

As so, the air that fills the Latin-cross shapes the non-binary, non-defined area, divided into 5 crossed quadrants of comparable dimension; a miscellaneous area, nearly a stage upon which completely different performs and genres can happen and supply the context. Alternatively, the inverse quadrants of the Latin cross embody the “programmed” areas, these with a extra everlasting use, that may assist any of the capabilities that happen within the “free” area. 

Furnishings, objects, supplies, and development particulars needed to be non-binary as nicely: the kitchen- island doubles as a reducing desk, and wall textures and their development don’t make clear if they’re partitions, paneling, doorways, or cabinets. Nothing is related to a selected perform. The “make-up” particular to a person perform – family home equipment or tableware, within the home aspect; computer systems, stationery, or printers, within the workplace aspect; wall bars, gear, or high-endurance screed, within the sports activities/dancing aspect – is hidden, disguised or built-in, avoiding all reference to the perform, and, as Jacques, Hondelatte stated, “not undermining freedom of use”.

Because it happens in a play or a physique, solely the widespread pure parts of the “binary architectures” are evident: construction, flooring, ceilings, pores and skin & partitions, gentle, providers, chairs, tables, and home windows.