MADRhybrID

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MADRhybrID

SIZE

1,000,000 +

BUDGET

$50M - 100M

The exceptional features of the challenge that
the intervention in the " S. Francisco el Grande " area requires ,
meaning the extraordinary ubication in the "cornisa" of the city
and all the historical values linked to it and also the process that has lead
to the achievement of the Plan Parcial de Reforma , make this exercise an
actual statement of principles.

The different positions and needs claimed by the various groups of actors who
participate in shaping such a strategic and emblematic site as this seams to
reach a breaking point
if the Capital had to choose beetween building an ambitious program of public
and private equipments and facilities on one side or on the other
building an urban park, both undoubtly necessary in the life of the city at the
moment.

This piece of land included beetween the Gran Via de S. Francisco and the
Manzanares is interested by many of the urban issues that most
ot the big contemporary urbanities have to deal with nowadays. We are meant to
answer to the two biggest needs of the central area of Madrid : the supply of equipments and f
green areas. The answer has to keep in mind that the
intervention is meant to complete the unfinished urban tissue of a central and
most exeptional historical piece of land.

The actual plan is the result of the possibilities permitted by the urban
policy. This way of generating the city's shape , needed when standardising the
answers to the numerous issues that have to be solved , doesn't keep in mind
the incredible tridimensionality of this site.
In this case the
question is what should we do to avoid having to choose beetween throwing a
huge amount of sqm into the park or building a beautiful and pleasent
park.
We suggest a new approach , that of the symbiotic hybradation.

Our approach , aware of the powerful potentials of the site , stands as an
alternative answer to the incabability of the urban regulamentation ( Plan
de la Cornisa ) to find a common field of coexistance for the needs and
aspirations of public and private spheres at both an urban and
architectural level.

Our aproach and the intentions of our suggestion have their roots in
applying to urban planning notions that are taken from the biological field :
symbiosis and hybridation. The synergie beetween them
defines a new way of approaching urban planning. The symbiotic hybridation can
be seen as an answer to the high density of the urban environnement together with the formal and legal limits
concerning the soil occupation. We are talking about a strategy to melt
down programatic ,formal ,administrative and burocratic boundaries ,
to bind a little the regulamentation policy ( via derogations) in order
to find a new urban shape for an intervention of revitalisation not only
concerning the supply of specific facilities or needs.
All this made possible by the cooperation of the actors , the users and the
managers.

The aim of our hybridation process is to melt the boundaries beetween
architecture and landscape on one side by reducing the impact of the 30.000 sqm
in the park and on the other by enhancing the presence of those elements
of the highest historical value wich have been and should hopefully continue to
be defining the image and identity of Madrid.
We aim to
complete the unfinished piece of land by a radical process of tridimensionalism
of the land that will redefine the meeting points of interior and exterior
spaces in order to answer
to the need of a morfological integration of the park into the city.

It is not possible in 2009 that a brick wall or a metal fence are still the
only way to allow the coexistence of public and private spaces in
such an emblematic site for the historic identity of Madrid. Our approach
suggests a process of hibridation that has its strength in redefining the meeting
point beetween the public and private spheres ,both in a formal and functional
way yet assuring the intimacy of the private dimension and the social opening
of public one.

We suggest a strategy of re-definition of the new functions injected into the
park. The hibridation and synergie by means of combining new activities and
urban practicies.

The new metropolitan dimension that we aim to give to the Cornisa San Francisco
will have its roots in the re-definition of the program.