The Manubuild Project: a proposal of the application of industrialized systems in the collective housing in Spain

Abstract

In March 2006 the Madrid Municipal Housing and Property Corporation (Spanish initials, EMVS) announced a limited competition of architectural ideas as the first step in erecting a building designed to the strategy laid down in the Integrated Manubuild R&D+i Project, funded under the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme.

The purpose of this competition, in which a number of European teams participated, was to obtain high-calibre architectural proposals for new building types for the Mediterranean climate and culture, using open and sustainable industrialized construction systems. The ideas selected were to constitute a conceptual springboard for a building that the EMVS planned to erect in Madrid as the product of the research.

The winning proposal, authored by Estudio RLA, aims to break the inertia that has traditionally weighed on Spanish construction, a model based on pseudo-craftsmanship and opportunistic property development that generated the least sustainable growth pattern in the European Union.

The project strategy rules out closed industrialization or serial production, opting for an approach in which the advantages of industrialization are interpreted in the context of energy savings. The proposal would be for comprehensive design in line with new, flexible building types able to evolve and adapt to users’ changing needs while ensuring the geometric compatibility required by industrialized systems.

The spatial flexibility required in the competition rules is, then, embodied in industrialized systems that generate the bearing structure, services, active and passive bio-climatic systems and the envelope. This provides for a wholly open solution in which building elements selected from a range of standardized products and suppliers can be combined.