Castelar House / SOLARSave this picture!HousesMadrid, SpainArchitects: SolarPhotographsPhotographs:Adri Goula Lead Architects: Pablo Canga, Ana Herreros More SpecsLess SpecsSave this picture!To restore an edifice means neither to maintain it, nor to repair it, nor to rebuild it; it means to reinstate it in a finished state, which may in fact have never existed at any given time. Eugne Viollet le-Duc. Building on the Built Cities and buildings have many lives. For decades a lack of feeling for the remains of the past, the incapacity to see them as depositories of collective memory, has contributed to the destruction of our built heritage. The erosion of our built history has led to a pendular reaction and the sacralization of heritage, the freezing of the object in time, sometimes without the rigor that such a crystallization would deserve. Casa Castelar is an ideological and aesthetic exercise on how to incorporate the memory and entropy of the already existing taking advantage of thermodynamic and informational capital into a contemporary project, from an angle having little to do with dogmatic preservation.Save this picture!Save this picture!Typological Recovery - Carried out in the 19th century outside the capital, the Madrid Moderno development comprised ninety-six houses designed in accordance with hygienist ideas of the garden-city, of which barely fourteen have survived the real-estate strain that has pressed upon the neighborhood since the 1970s. The commission involved refurbishing one of them, the deficient state of which made it necessary to redo the structure behind the listed facade. In the knowledge that the sites heritage value lay beyond neo-Mudejar bonds and the distinctive lookout in front, we opted to recover the buildings original scheme. Thanks to a series of strategic operations and demolitions, which eliminated additions that had crowded the plot, the 1890 layout of an L around a courtyard reappeared, containing the new program. The interior is characterized by the concatenation of regular rooms connected by large voids to the stairwell, generating crossed views as one ascends but without causing any loss of visual references, which remain constant.Save this picture!Save this picture!Craftmanship vs. Technology - While the front was reconstructed in accordance with classical restoration procedures whereby templates are drawn up, woodwork is done manually, and traditional crafts are harnessed, all at a slow pace the rear facade was given large openings and a skin of recycled aluminum perforated and cut by numerical control. This lightweight system facilitated construction and ensured easier maintenance, as well as any dismantling and reuse in the future. With such duality tradition vs. innovation, craft vs. industry the house has two contrasting facades. It is a Janus with the countenance of another time, concealing behind it a face of the future. Ecological Ethics - Because buildings of the past are valuable caches of materials, energy, and human effort, the task of transforming them becomes an ecological imperative bound to re-shape our built landscape. While preserving existing elements, the project has put in bioclimatic strategies and systems thermal insulation, new joineries, aerothermal solutions, and the optimization of cross ventilation that have reduced energy consumption by over 70%.Save this picture!Consciente de que el valor patrimonial reside ms all de los aparejos neomudjares y el distintivo mirador, el proyecto apuesta por la restitucin del esquema original de casa. Gracias a una serie de intervenciones y demoliciones estratgicas, que eliminaron los aadidos que colmataban la parcela, se logr recuperar la tipologa de 1890 en L en torno a un patio alrededor del cual se distribuye el programa. A nivel espacial, el interior se caracteriza por la concatenacin de estancias regulares conectadas mediante grandes huecos con la caja de la escalera, dando lugar a una serie de vistas cruzadas que acompaan el ascenso sin perder la referencia visual constante tanto entre ellas como con el patio.Save this picture!Save this picture!Artesana vs tecnologa. Mientras que la fachada exterior se rehabilit siguiendo modelos clsicos de restauracin, donde la elaboracin de plantillas, la ebanistera artesanal y la recuperacin de oficios tradicionales se desarrollaron a un ritmo lento; en la fachada trasera se recortaron grandes huecos y se revisti con una piel de aluminio reciclado, perforado y cortado por control numrico. Este sistema constructivo ligero facilit la instalacin, as como el posible desmantelamiento, reutilizacin y mantenimiento en el futuro. La dualidad entre tradicin e innovacin, y artesana e industrializacin aplicadas en ambas fachadas, dotan a la vivienda de dos frentes de marcado contraste. Un Jano con rostro de otro tiempo detrs del que se esconde otro fijo en el porvenir.Save this picture!Save this picture!tica ecolgica. Los edificios del pasado son valiosos depsitos que acumulan materiales, energa y esfuerzo humano, por lo que su transformacin se erige como un imperativo ecolgico que, sin duda, dar forma a nuestro paisaje construido. Adems de la conservacin de elementos existentes, se han implantado estrategias y sistemas bioclimticos aislamiento trmico, nuevas carpinteras, instalacin de aero-termia y la optimizacin de la ventilacin cruzada que han permitido reducir el consumo energtico en ms de un 70%.Save this picture!Project gallerySee allShow lessAbout this officeSOLAROfficePublished on February 04, 2025Cite: "Castelar House / SOLAR" [Casa Castelar / SOLAR] 04 Feb 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1026402/castelar-house-solar&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream