The laws of organization

A building with four housing units situated in central Madrid (Orifila street), on the lands where the ancient stables of the adjacent palace were, led us to experiment with the points of coincidence between the traditions of the Madrilenian lookouts and a permeable curtain wall protected from the sun.

This allows for interiors to combine the traditional comfort of large, linked rooms, with clean contemporary spaces and their fluidity between interior and exterior.

At the same time, the context, conditioned as much as by the palace as by the large trees existing on the plot, compelled us to imagine the small building as a pavilion, responding to all of the stimuli of the environment and, at the same time to none of it, apparently self-absorbed in its own laws of spatial and material organization, while still aware of resolving the more generic and difficult problem: elegance.

Iñaki Ábalos (San Sebastian, 1956) received his degree in architecture from the ETSAM (Madrid, 1978) where he also received his doctorate in 1991, and has been department head since 2002. In 1985 he founded Ábalos & Herreros with John Lautner. In 2008 the firm divided into two independent firms: Ábalos + Sentkiewicz and Herreros Arquitectos. Ábalos is the author of several books, including: Natural Artificial, The Good Life, and two volumes of the Atlas Pintoresco.

Renata Sentikiewicz (Kolo, Poland, 1972) received her degree in architecture from the Krakow Polytechnic (1998). Since 1999 she has worked with Abalos & Herreros, joining the firm as co-author in 2001. In 2006 she founded Abalos + Sentkiewicz Architects. She has been a professor at the ETSAM since 2005.