Over the last 30 years, industrial activity in the centre of Madrid has gradually increased as a result of rising property values, noise/environmental protection measures, and various planning regulations that encouraged the property owners to change their land use from industrial to residential. As a result, industrial buildings within the urban fabric are now at risk of extinction, leaving the city reduced to a single use and the disappearance of this typology.
Part of a project series called “Elements for industrial recovery,” Eulalia by BURR Studio is part of a developing strategy to protect the city’s industrial heritage by providing use and occupation alternatives that extend the usefulness of the industrial warehouse/typology and avoid its demolition.
Previously a warehouse of disparate objects, the interventions made to Eulalia do not directly affect the walls and deck. Specifically, a staircase and gate have been developed to connect and isolate a small space of intimacy for the inhabitants. These components, with their colour, materiality and sharp contrast from the remainder of the workshop-style space.
By focusing on content rather than the container, the architects focus on the experience of different relationships that objects in space establish with each other. Large-format photographs, work tools, rescued and restored furniture, a kitchen from a recently closed restaurant, a bench from an abandoned church and plants of different types and sizes, among the many objects that make up his collection, generate different compositions, causing the space to operate as a large background.
