Matadero Madrid center for contemporary creation

MUNICIPAL COLONIES

SUSTAINABLE URBAN DESIGN
Start date
End date
Venue
Central de diseño
Institution
This exhibition uses the model of the renovation of the Municipal Colonies of San Francisco y Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles to reflect upon contemporary Urban Design and will treat the description of the new area using two perspectives: that of memory and that of the projects.

For the last thirty years, Madrid City Hall, via EMVS, has been working on an unprecedented urban and social regeneration project in the area of Puente de Vallecas known as the San Francisco Javier y Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles Municipal Colonies, establishing a new neighborhood based on environmental and social sustainability and energy efficiency criteria.

  This exhibition uses the model of the Municipal Colonies' renovation to reflect upon contemporary Urban Design and will treat the description of the new area using two perspectives: that of MEMORY and that of THE PROJECTS.

Renovating a consolidated part of the urban landscape requires giving special attention to the place's sense of common memory, a memory created over many generations of neighbors, businesses and neighborhood regulars that forms part of the attachment the community feels to the space where they live.  It means creating a living archive for the place, honoring its origins and history and permitting new projects to become part of the area's living memory.

The projects carried out in the Municipal Colonies run through the common spaces, easing pedestrian traffic flow.  New community services for heating, hot water and refuse removal have been established and the majority of the new constructions have been selected using independent jury-selected open competitions; they are a good example of the top-of-the-line architecture for social housing that the best professionals are able to produce thans to EMVS.

  Thus, this showing intends to not only display those building projects that will be executed, but also the projects chosen as finalists, allowing the visitor to play on a sort of game board at the exhibition and propose his own changes to the projects: trading some buildings for others, changing locations and even changing the order of the buildings, generating infinite possibilities for a neighborhood different from the one being built.   This game brings participation to Urban Design and is intended as a tool to bring together neighbors, professionals and collective groups in the designing of the city.


EMVS
Artistic team and specifications
Comisario
Manu Rubio
Organization
Empresa Municipal de la Vivienda y Suelo Municipal Housing & Property EMVS
Participants
Central de Diseño / DIMAD and Matadero Madrid