The competition for the Collective Housing in Pedro el Grande took us to the reconsideration of the volume and its buildability from the very beginning. We started from the pure prism, playing, adapting, breaking it according to the very strict rules of the regulations. The outcome should be the discovery of new cohabitation interstices that improved the usual settings of social housing. This kind of spaces, both fractionated and interconnected in floor plan and section, let the reduced dimensions of the project have generous areas for leisure and familiar activities.

With this volumetric approach that took deeply into account the natural lighing, the building got to lodge 4 units. They were based on the typical deep housing type: day area, night area and the access in between them.

JENGA

Thanks to the stepped piling of these units, we totally freed the ground floor for a necessary escape related to the ventilation and circulation open core. This patio also created semi-private landings that remind us the contained disposition of chairs in the evening, typical activity of the Andalucian people in the street. The rest of the tube is a solar chimney that connects with the common space in the ground floor, creating a natural vertical-horizontal ventilation flow.

All of those elements, plus the interstices, usually protected by a concrete block lattice {new expression of the building}, crownd at the rooftop in which the use and enjoyment are the consequence of the contacts between neighbours and visitors.