PACHON — PAREDES challenges archetypes with 'non-binary' residence in madrid

NON-BINARY CROSS SPACE III by PACHON — PAREDES in madrid

NON-BINARY CROSS SPACE III by Spanish studio PACHON — PAREDES occupies and adapts a concrete-built apartment with a super-compartmentalized layout in the Pacifico neighborhood of the Ensanche developments in Madrid. It is part of a series of projects with two ongoing investigations. The first, NON-BINARY SPACE, explores a trans-scalar research process of ‘undefined’ habitats in architecture through the coupling between space, time, matter, and energy — to preserve freedom of use, occupation, adaptability, and space interpretation by their users, cultures, and socioeconomic vectors over time. Secondly, the CROSS-SPACE research encompasses a set of transformations, adaptations, rehabilitations, and aggregations that shape a space occupancy strategy native to the architecture’s infrastructure or structural type it stands.

image © Luis Asín

CROSS-SPACE: redefining how we inhabit structures

NON-BINARY CROSS SPACE III is the third project of the series to explore an approach to occupying and intervening in structures — in this case, through a concrete residential building. According to the team at PACHON — PAREDES, the spaces adapt to the sizes, widths, heights, and constructive constraints imposed by concrete sizing and structures used in the development and suburb areas of several Spanish cities throughout the second half of the 20th century. In the case of Madrid, this archetype composes most of the built fabric, filling the gaps left by the ‘Ensanche’ plan and other Metropolitan areas after the civil war. ‘It is not only a form of spatial adaptation and transformation, but also constructive and economic, as the solutions used in the planes that form the spatial envelopment adapt and benefit from the existing conditions within the structural basis of slabs, supports, beams, and facades,’ writes the team.

image © Luis Asín

This occupation strategy analyzes and translates the grid possibilities that result from this specific structural system to define two types of spaces: ‘binary’ / defined and ‘non-binary’ / undefined, neutral, and flexible. Strategically, the least possible number of defined spaces is considered and constructed in each project, creating a void, a ‘non-built’ — a ‘cross-space of an undetermined nature. Depending on the structure, the resulting space is defined by its various quadrants, naves, transversal layers, and adjacent or continued spaces. One may understand and use these as extensions, aggregates, or transitions with a timeless lack of definition and associated uses.

image © Luis Asín

NON–BINARY SPACE: universality, flexibility, and guarantee of use

Nobody can precisely determine how we live, how we want to live, or how we will live in the near future. Unlike previous historical periods — where socioeconomic factors dictated functions, privacy, family, and domestic lifestyles, which in turn shaped the character of the architecture that contained them and, therefore, the limits on user behavior — today’s diverse society demands more than ever flexibility and adaptability of the socio-cultural and urban models, both at a micro and macro scales. ‘Architecture must gain the ability to be fluid and malleable between different uses, functions, and typologies of definition and undefinition of space over time. By revisiting the theories around flexibility, hybridization, adaptability, and neutrality, we must achieve a way of intervening or not intervening, which aspires to adapt in the best way possible to the ever-changing circumstances of human behavior,’ continues PACHON — PAREDES.

image © Luis Asín

With that said, the non-built quadrants that shape the void of the ‘cross-space’ are designed as dynamic and fluid — akin to shared spaces like public squares or streets. Its own nature allows users to colonize and program it, to link and connect it, to revert it quickly as their needs change throughout the days, weeks, months, or years, in the same way as the urban public space does. In CROSS SPACE III, the main facades that form the four backgrounds of the cross-space are regarded as elements that can be programmed or deprogrammed in a specific manner to each quadrant, either for culinary use, as an office, for practicing sports, or for leisure and relaxation. These elements, therefore, contain and fit household appliances, services, pantries, doors, hangers, a climbing wall, sports materials, radiators, air conditioners, doorsteps, tables, computers, screens, shelves, and storage rooms.

image © Luis Asín

On the other hand, the ‘binary’ spaces in the domestic sense inhabit the limits of the cross-space and support the undefined areas. As a result, this constructed limit becomes the secondary facades of the public domestic space: bedrooms, toilets, wardrobes, services, paneling, windows, doors, walls, terraces, etc.… These recall shops, establishments, arcades, alleys, lookouts, fences, and gardens. ‘As a catalyst between what is private, individual and particular, and what is public, shared and collective, the NON-BINARY SPACE serves as a spatial infrastructure,’ reflects the studio.

image © Luis Asín

Lastly, non-binary zones must have distinct physical connections, orientations, thermodynamic properties, and access to exterior areas — encouraging the delivery of different passive and active thermodynamical possibilities to its potential users. The exact perimeters are freed and connected physically to the outer area, providing the greatest possible adaptability to natural lighting, ventilation, and access, by recovering terraces that were once enclosed. The material-constructive approach also considers the non-defined aspect of its elements by being neutral, both visually and invisibly, for universality, flexibility, and a guarantee of appropriation by its users.

image © Luis Asín