JOSÉ MARÍA DE LAPUERTA

Architects: DL+A

Location: Sevilla, Spain 

Year: 2009

Images/text from: http://www.delapuerta.com/

By the Architects:

The Project of Seville comes from a first prize in a competition of ideas anonymous, national and open, that supported a promotion of social housing in one of the most prized neighborhoods of Seville.

The proposal opted to consume the maximum height. This decision allowed to release much of the ground floor. Pros: better sunshine of open spaces, visual and pedestrian permeability and, above all, the creation of outdoor spaces that address different types of public space.

The seven towers-courtyard are arranged with an arbitrary, random appearance in the plot, however thoughtful response to the increased distance between facades, the views from the houses, the optimum sunlight, the multiplicity of outdoor spaces ... The typelogy is four homes per center, all dual orientation.

On the facades, the extruded aluminiun sunblinds and the prefab concrete pieces acquire the same texture. That way, the transparent and opaque canvas appears undifferentiated, windows cannot be seen when they are closed, and they slide and are wide open...

Finally, the project addresses the different ways of relationship between users. Because of this, two types of community areas are created:

-The forest clearings, permeable on all sides to a city that participates in its enjoyment and maintenance.-The Squares of the towers, all with different uses (gymnastic games, Basketball, skater, fairs, etc.), which invite users from the other towers to share their actions with its neighbors.-At the same time, in each tower, an overriding public space discovers the ultimate degree of intimacy between users of different buildings ... the owner of one of the neighboring invites to the onwner from another one to his “watchtower”, to his finger, open spaces that signalize each other talking about invisible relationships ... .Smoking cigarettes, chatting, rambling or simply contemplate together "your portion" of heaven.

Architects: DL+A

Location: Bilbao, Spain 

Year: 2002-2005

Images/text from: http://www.delapuerta.com/

By the Architects:

The site was a former iron mine, with a topography that had slopes of up to 50 meters, surrounded by a disorganized and degraded residential outskirts to the north and by the channeled Nervion River and the Miraflores peninsula and Miribilla to the south.

The assignment is the result of Europan IV Competition (Chema Lapuerta Francisco Burgos and architects, as in the Coslada project, and the rest of the team are from De Lapuerta & Asensio architects). Although we were working on the same plot of the competition, having less housing units and acting only in an edge, it seemed that the project had to start from different premises. It was not so and we became lucky and were able to apply, even radicalize the ideas of Europan.

Indeed, if we look at the panels awarded in the contest and read the ideas outlined, they are valid for that, but even more for the five towers finally executed:"END and top off the edge of town. It was the responsibility of the proposed architecture to order against confusion. ""CONVERT the upper street to a viewer street. The buildings will mark, surprise with different views different from the other side ""PROJECT houses to look to the landscape and noon, the park and the streets""It is about SEWING vertically, assigning that role to the own building."

The result at the premises of the place and the intentions of the project are five residential  towers (only for its slenderness) perched on a stepped base (due to the sharp slope) that absorbs all the sector garages (four times more places than which correspond ) which is accessed by a new street below; intermediate semipublic squares looking at the views across the Nervion; all the living rooms facing the midday sun.

Five towers, slender drawers, black cellulose-cement as rain facades; the Naturvex graphite is riveted on double omegas in expansion. Sockets of prefabricated concrete with black washed aggregate : black gravel cover. Fronts to south and anodized aluminum joinery in its color.

Architects: DL+A

Location: Madrid, Spain 

Year: 2018-2019

Images/text from: http://www.delapuerta.com/

By the Architects:

A new building in the Barrio de Salamanca has to study the existing ones, respect them, frame them. But, above all, improve them.  It was about designing a building giving two very different streets, on one side, Alcalá street and on the other hand Francisca Moreno street.All homes had to be the best.

On Alcala Street the facade is repetitive, compliant with the window rithm  tradition of Madrid. The windows are large, high-rise sliding doors that are quite sophisticated in terms of their isolation and ease of opening, which hide the frame from the outside, giving the sensation of a glass that slides over the stone facade.

Inside, they have a balcony, re-edition of the Madrid balcony with locks and wooden handrails.

In facade of Francisca Moreno the building is set back in a courtyard open to the street of glazed cloths, a  sculpted “geode” that maximizes the luminosity in the houses and enhances the effects of nuances, and depth. All homes, all rooms, are exterior ... the street is now sunnier, brighter.

The colors and reflections of the glasses are not capricious. Those located on the south façade are set back and protected from direct summer sun, while those located north look outwards, looking for light.

Curved glass follows the tradition of bow windows that managed to maximize space and natural light inside and on the upper facades exposed to the west, a double skin of glass slats with solar control is raised, allowing views of the roofs from Madrid.

The facade is then a very careful garden, with vegetation chosen to provide color throughout the year, a fountain, residential areas, adult trees planted as “specimens” of deciduous that protect from the sun in summer, nuances views, and allow the sun in winter.

Architects: DL+A

Location: Bilbao, Spain 

Year: 2007-2010

Images/text from: http://www.delapuerta.com/

By the Architects:

The Project of Seville comes from a first prize in a competition of ideas anonymous, national and open, that supported a promotion of social housing in one of the most prized neighborhoods of Seville.

The proposal opted to consume the maximum height. This decision allowed to release much of the ground floor. Pros: better sunshine of open spaces, visual and pedestrian permeability and, above all, the creation of outdoor spaces that address different types of public space.

The seven towers-courtyard are arranged with an arbitrary, random appearance in the plot, however thoughtful response to the increased distance between facades, the views from the houses, the optimum sunlight, the multiplicity of outdoor spaces ... The typelogy is four homes per center, all dual orientation.

On the facades, the extruded aluminiun sunblinds and the prefab concrete pieces acquire the same texture. That way, the transparent and opaque canvas appears undifferentiated, windows cannot be seen when they are closed, and they slide and are wide open...

Finally, the project addresses the different ways of relationship between users. Because of this, two types of community areas are created:

-The forest clearings, permeable on all sides to a city that participates in its enjoyment and maintenance.-The Squares of the towers, all with different uses (gymnastic games, Basketball, skater, fairs, etc.), which invite users from the other towers to share their actions with its neighbors.-At the same time, in each tower, an overriding public space discovers the ultimate degree of intimacy between users of different buildings ... the owner of one of the neighboring invites to the onwner from another one to his “watchtower”, to his finger, open spaces that signalize each other talking about invisible relationships ... .Smoking cigarettes, chatting, rambling or simply contemplate together "your portion" of heaven.

Architects: DL+A

Location: Bilbao, Spain 

Year: 2007-2010

Images/text from: http://www.delapuerta.com/

By the Architects:

The assignment comes from the first prize in a competition of ideas organized in 2005. In the center, in front of the bridge of San Anton in Bilbao la Vieja, just where the Camino de Santiago doubled. The optimism in architecture comes, sometimes, from feeling very fortunate for the opportunities you had. This was one of them. The possibility of designing the two facades facing a newly created street in the old town, to decide volumes, cornices and propose how that street, extremely inclined, is offered as an extension to the historic bridge of San Anton, was a successful challenge; a project divided into two and anchored on its back by the geometric complexity of the dividing walls of several existing buildings.

The two pieces object of the competition have a relationship of asymmetrical and non-mimetic reference. They invent the city and sculpt the street. The strong slope of the street between blocks facilitates the location and access to garages and comercial, coated in prefab concrete. The decision on how far the red alignment arrives and where the recessed tile volumes begin, which have vocation of disappearing into the gray days of the capital, was a decision to scale. The gray volumes, which have been changing throughout the process, had something of temporary construction suspended at any given time. The cornice offsets answer from one part of the slopes, but they also remind us about the division of property in the historic centers.

The attiscs are an expressive opportunity, while the structure and rhythm of the entire facade of red precast is timeless, flexible. We have always thought that these facades that explain the kitchens because of their clotheslines and the living rooms because of the terraces, are less able to favor changes and adaptations tahn those which suggest a lack of differentiation of the outer perimeter and a peripheral arrangement of the common elements: the box versus case that Paricio speaks about.

Guessing the color and textures of the facades right became an obsession; the success of the project and its future dialogue with the neighborhood and pre-existing buildings depended on it. The red-orange color brick of some more than a century old nearby public buildings did prolong the process of trial and error until the day before the ultimatum necessary to meet deadlines. Prefabricated red dye to saturation, dusting oxide powder before concreting and striped rubber mold as background. Color fixation. Striped gums alternate (vertical-horizontal) seeking, when the different lights of Bilbao, at different times, impinge on them, an effect of changing facade, always different. Precast gray sandblasted sockets and anti-graffiti paint that slightly changes its color, brightness gray tile facades and roofs of attics, adhering and grouting mortar with latex-based plasticizers.