05_MARTINEZ | Social housing

NAME

Project title: 27 Social housing

Recommending party
The project has been submitted by: Luis Martinez Santa Maria

LOCATION
Country: Spain

City: Toledo

Address: Rosalia de Castro

AUTHOR

Designer or design team architects:

Luis Martinz Santa Maria

DETAILS  

Plot Area: 6544 mq

Gross Area: 3750 mq

Of which residential: 100%
Public/communal areas:
Facilities for the public:
Business/trade:
Offices:

Number of residential units: 27
Typology of users: families
Total building costs Euros: 3.231.544
Building Cost = Total Bulding Cost / Gross Area: 861 €/m2
Floor area ratio = Gross Area / Plot Area: 0,57
Work started on date: 01/2005
Work completion date: 12/2010

OWNERSHIP 

Promoter: Gicamonsa
Allotment rule: –
Reduction cost percentage compared to the market value:
– assignement 50%
– rent –

Description of the project: 

Mocejon dwellings are located in a plain, just at the end of the village. From far distanced visions they
will appear as two elongated bars. A deep and horizontal shadow line, correspondent to the linear upper
window, also will be clearly appreciated.
Passing-by trains or agricultural and cattle ships floating abstractly in the middle of the countryside could have been influential images at the beginning or the project.

There are not frontal doors to the dwellings. Each one of the several openings positioned in the façade
drives you to a little court which is shared by every two houses. This absence of ground floor door, close
to the existence of the first floor fenetre a longeur, impedes the reading of the exact measure of each
house. And that is important because every house does not measure very much.

During building process the use of brick was winning and gaining importance. We could say that there
was a radicalization of the use of the bricks. But, is it not each work the amazing expression of a matter radicalization?

The investigation carried out in this work centres on some mechanisms of organization, join and
significance, all melted in order to achieve a house bigger than it really is.
You go into the house just in its centre, a fact which eludes the presence of corridors and distributors and that allows obtaining an extra of useful surface destined to increase the surface of the main rooms. The house’s door is hidden in order to prevent the reading of the real measurements, always too limited and disappointing. A dimensional alteration is also insisted on with the long top north window, related to the scale of the place, a big park, and no to the inner divisions of the dwellings.

We have payed a lot of attention to the brick texture. Most of bricks are backside layered in order to make visible the marks and imperfections, the reality of its composition and manufacture. This action turns the brick fabrics nearest, less impenetrable, and that is important. When bricks are placed near hands and eyes, they interact mysteriously with the body.