Projects Wanted - Gardening Pavillions, by Israel Alba

Today we publish the second project among the ones that were kindly sent by the Spanish Architecture office Israel Alba. "Gardening Pavillions" is, as described by the architect, a "home for gardeners", located in the area of Las Tablas/Vallecas in the city of Madrid. Has an area of 160 sqm and was built for the client Ayuntamento de Madrid (Madrid City Hall). The photographic work was conducted by Jesús Granada.

Access also the first Israel Alba's project published in our blog - Environmental Technology Centre in Valdemingómez.

We are open to receive projects from all around the world, regardless of their dimension or typology. Please send us high quality photos (indicating their authors), drawings and descriptive texts in English to our Marketing e-mail - david.cardoso@dimscale.com. It will be our pleasure to help spreading new Architecture concepts and ideas.

"More than just a gardening pavilion, what we have truly wanted to build is a home for gardeners. The project, perceived as a unique system of pavilions, enables the repetition and serialisation for providing unity to the image of the woodland facility, mainly dealing with the topography and the interior distribution according to the needs of every district, which are not always the same. The variation of colours used allows for the personalisation of each pavilion and, furthermore, responds to criteria related to gardening and the identity of the facility. The first decision was to place the pavilions inside the city’s network of green spaces, in the new parks within the recently-built suburban areas, in an attempt to establish a new relationship between architecture and landscape where all is one. We propose simple surrounding or an extruded section by way of framework, where the roof is in continuity with the short vertical planes. We have built the framework using a system of light, pre-industrialised-concrete panels, thereby reducing the time taken to complete it. The two long fronts, in contact with the parks and their system of access points, constitute the framework locks, built with micro-perforated and folded galvanised steel, in floor-to-ceiling parts which link the interior and the exterior. By day, the pavilion is a solid, opaque and mysterious object while from the interior the limits dematerialize and connect the pavilion to the park. At night, the interior lights up and the pavilion becomes a reference lamp that reaffirms its public nature."

- Israel Alba

Projects Wanted - Environmental Technology Centre in Valdemingómez, by Israel Alba

Israel Alba is a Spanish Architecture office located in Madrid - this office kindly answered to our Projects Wanted initiative and sent us five projects to be published on DIMSCALE Blog. The project we publish today - Environmental Technology Centre in Valdemingómez - is also located in Madrid (Valdemingómez) and is distributed by an area of 2.350 sqm. The photographic work was conducted by Eduardo Sánchez. Over the next months we'll be publishing the remaining projects sent by Israel Alba.

We are open to receive projects from all around the world, regardless of their dimension or typology. Please send us high quality photos (indicating their authors), drawings and descriptive texts in English to our Marketing e-mail - david.cardoso@dimscale.com. It will be our pleasure to help spreading new Architecture concepts and ideas.

"The Environmental Technology Centre (ETC) is situated in the former Valdedomingómez landfill site which has now been restored and transformed into a public forest park as part of the Southeast Madrid Regional Park Restoration Project. It is a visible restored access point and a meeting place in which environmentally relevant activities can be carried out. These range from courses, seminars and conferences to various types of exhibitions. Its educational objective is to disseminate understanding and raising awareness among the youngest sectors of society. One of the most significant decisions taken upon embarking on this project was to locate the building on the exact site of the old waste reception warehouse and the furnace in order to recover the extraordinary unloading pits for use as exhibition and library areas as well as to help conserve the most significant elements of the facilities’ history. Thus, the ETC has become a “recycled object” inserted into an environment which was historically intended for recycling and waste transformation, and therefore constitutes a bridge between the past and the future. The ETC, with a library, exhibition halls and a small auditorium, sits on a carpet of concrete and takes the form of three powerful volumes: two wooden boxes joined by a third glass one which is embedded into them, organising the connections between the different areas and linking the building to its immediate surroundings."

- Israel Alba