Social homes in Móstoles

60 SOCIAL HOUSING UNITS (PROTECTED). FOR RENT.

Location: PAU-4.  MOSTOLES (MADRID).

Owner: Móstoles Land Institute (IMS). Móstoles Town Council, Madrid

Design: José Enrique Fombella Guillem and Antonio Mata Mesa

Construction supervision: José Enrique Fombella Guillem

Date: 2004-2007

 

Móstoles Town Council’s municipal housing company (IMS) invited a restricted number of teams with proven experience in social housing design to tender for the project. Our team won the contract.

The project was for sixty temporary accommodation units to be rented by the elderly and young people, aimed at low income families.

 

The units were designed in four rows, arranged like the sails of a windmill around a central space, three of the blocks having two storeys and one block three.  This layout maximised free space on the plot, creating a large private area inside the complex which could be used as a common space, where the different generations can enjoy each other’s company.

 

For optimal use of the available land, just one vehicle access leads to all the units from the road. Entrances are thereby not repeated while the basement level facilitates vehicle access and parking, leaving the surface of the plot free and aiding pedestrian movement and enhancing the functioning of the municipal road network.

 

Units for older people are located on the ground floor, with direct access to outside gardens and tree-lined spaces, while the young people’s apartments are on the first and second floors.

 

All the housing units are reached via covered exterior galleries on all levels with four stair wells and two lifts providing vertical connection to all floors.

 

All the units have the same facilities, comprising a living-dining room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. The bathrooms/kitchens are located one above the other, combining and centralising building services. The position of the living rooms and bedrooms is switched around on the different levels and are reached via covered access from the common galleries.

 

In addition to the apartments described, a covered common area was designed on the ground floor, near the main entrance, for meetings, services, laundry, etc. The common and centralised building services facilitate efficient and economic energy management.

 

A semi-industrialised construction system was used with prefabricated and standardised components on a structural fabric erected on site, which enabled construction costs to be kept to a minimum.