In the middle of my career I found a tool that is currently with me and will surely be with me until the last assignment. A tool that is not fixed, but is maintained, tool that allows experimenting, making mistakes, and trying to correct. Dialogue.

DIALOGUES OF A DOOR

This time I had the opportunity to talk to a gate, not just any gate, but the first one in Madrid, which has been a victim of the passing of the years, even to the point of being forgotten by the people it once welcomed. 

It is said that in its day (9th century) the Puerta de la Vega was the main point of access to the walled city founded by Muhammad I. Situated at the southern end of Madrid's cornice, it welcomed travellers from the west, facilitating the entrance thanks to its gentle slope (a slope that today bears the same name). Over time, Madrid has turned its back on the importance of this gate, encroaching, destroying and forgetting. 

The report de la Cuesta de la Vega is somehow still present, waiting its turn to be remembered.

DIALOGUE 1:1000

The dialogue begins with the city, where the omission becomes evident. The Cuesta de la Vega has changed roles. Once it was the beginning and now it is perceived as the end of one of the most important streets in the city, La calle Mayor. Urban planning focused on roadways has been the main culprit, giving priority to ramps that allow vehicle access to the centre of Madrid. The excessive growth of the city has also had an effect, occupying part of the plot for the construction of 3 blocks of flats. These leave a crude party wall exposed on one of Madrid's most iconic edges.

It is here that the report cries out to be re-dignified, unthinkable that the remains of the first wall now form part of a rubbish room in a block of flats. A pity that the main city gate is now nothing more than a sloping car park .

The urban intervention seeks to transcend the physical, seeking to recover the feeling of "arriving". Walking up from the valley of the Manzanares to the "Promontorio Real" is a route that all Madrileños and visitors should experience. To trace a pedestrian path linking Madrid-Monumental with Madrid-Río opens up a new opportunity to get to know the city in a human way, walking. 

DIALOGUE 1:100

It is time to engage in conversation with the immediate environment, defining the scope and rules of project. A "building" that from the beginning was aware that it had to belong to two worlds, that is to say, respond to two scales. A distant scale, as it could be perceived as part of the "real promontory" and another, closer scale, or human scale.

Regarding the distant scale: Participation or Silence? It is true that every architect would like to be part of the monumental group of buildings of a city like Madrid, but it is assumed that the project does not have such nobility. This reflection leads to a volumetry that must pass almost unnoticed from a distance. The cornice reveals a building with sufficient historical weight, the Palacio de los Consejos.

In relation to the human scale, the decision was taken to "unearth" the Arab wall, a fundamental piece to be exhibited in the interpretation centre. The removal of the 3 housing blocks from the site gave rise to the concern of a volumetric report . What would a Madrilenian think if nothing existed on the site? Therefore, an architecture is designed that manifests itself on a close scale, a volumetry with an emphatic geometry, which avoids any contemporary formal whimsy.

DIALOGUE 1:10

Finally, the dialogue comes to a conclusion; the detail. 

The material with which Madrid's architecture communicates is granite. You can find it on all the pavements, on the foundations of its buildings, all over the city. The materiality in this intervention seeks to reinterpret the existing, being executed with a pigmented concrete that uses aggregates to refer to this stone.

Inside, the building must mediate the interaction of two moments. The first is that which encloses the archaeological pieces to be exhibited, where there must be a temporal empathy that is materialised in a technological silence. The second moment is today, with a global situation that demands certain technological solutions to help combat climate change.

A solution is sought that responds to the previously exposed moments, dignifying each of them with a different material resolution that can harmonise in the same enclosure.

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