Paseo La Cuba Social Housing

The project seeks to reconcile the scale formed by the complex, whose volumes respond to urban conditions, with the more domestic scale, a consequence of its fragmentation into four smaller pieces that allow for the construction of a landscaped interior space that provides access to all the dwellings. This fragmented condition allows a certain fluidity between the nearest green areas. The volumes of the smaller pieces are five storeys high, so that they do not cast shadows on the longitudinal block. This block has an open ground floor, in which there is only a single dwelling with a small garden, and on this empty ground floor there are four floors plus a fifth floor with three attics.

In relation to the difficult balance that occurs between fragmentation and compactness in a place like Albacete with a very high number of hours of sunshine, cold in winter and hot in summer, we have preferred to prioritise the capacity to capture energy by radiation, so fragmentation is a factor in favour. For this reason, the south-east and south-west facing enclosures, which are heavily glazed, are protected with eaves and sliding shutters from the solar radiation of the summer and generate a small outdoor space where it is possible to look out and be in the open air.

With regard to the dwellings, the project seeks maximum clarity in the segregation of the day and night areas, thus managing to minimise the irregularities produced by the load-bearing structure and the installations and to enrich a rigid and tight distribution scheme with small intermediate spaces.