Arquitectura de barrio - taller educativo
(Neighborhood Arquitecture workshop)
March-April 2023
Biblioteca de Bellas Artes Complutense University - Madrid
This project seeks to perpetuate the historical-affective memory of working-class neighborhoods by re-imagining the construction of houses that once made up the landscape and that are gradually disappearing. Participants recreated dollhouses out of their memories of houses in which they once used to live around Puente de Vallecas neighborhood, developing a three-dimensional archive of the peculiarities that characterize the working-class architecture of XX century Madrid. To do this, we worked with the ladies of the Centro Municipal de Mayores Navacerrada, located in the neighborhood, many of whom lived in these same low-rise houses that are being lost fromVallecas’s landscape today.
The workshop begins with the screening of the film 'My grandmother's house' followed by a talk with the director, Adán Aliaga, introducing the themes of old age and its relation to the loss of the home (and the memories of a lifetime) in the face of urban progress. Successive sessions focus on the manufacture of little houses reminiscent of the old homes of the ladies present at the workshop.
1st session: Screening of the film "La casa de mi abuela", with the director Adán Aliaga.
2nd session: Reading and interpretation of La casa tomada (Julio Cortázar) and beginning of blueprints of houses from one’s memory.
3rd – 6th sessions: Manufacturing of house models.