23-Nov-2016 The place was an old garage. Previously been the seat of the car line linking the two main train stations in Madrid, and before an garden.
The customers, a group of young entrepreneurs who wanted to build the Madrid headquarters of a global network The Hub . Timeshare offices for social entrepreneurs, which conduct the most varied projects that seek to "change the world."
When we saw the garage, we got a strong impression; it was intact, untouched since the 40's, this space was a bubble in the most silted area of Madrid-Centre.
We wanted to implement energy-saving criteria, economic sustainability and recycling processes that we believe pose the challenge of the times we live in, explore a new way to refurbish the buildings of the twentieth .
We considered whether we would be able to not alter or obscure the layers of life in this space, virtually no even to design ...
... What happens if we isolate only the cover, add a floor heating system under large planks of wood, warm in winter and cool in summer, if we don’t paint the walls, lined only with recycled wool felt in meeting rooms , to letting their patina expression, their old labels, the defects ..
.... What happens if I buy almost introduce anything new, if we call on the people of the Hub to donate their used furniture, if we add other furniture retirees to give them another chance ....anyway we need some furniture, a kind of wildcard... so we ordered boxes, fruit boxes, which are also stools, support, form a ladder, shelves, a ticket office.
... And if we plant an orange tree in the old moat of oil change. ..
Hub Madrid currently hosts numerous events and has become a major focus of cultural and social activity in the neighbourhood.
30-May-2013 "The eye that you see is not an eye because you see it ... is an eye because it sees " Antonio Machado
Need Sometimes you can die of success, and the Hub Madrid was happening. Its main function, to be a co-working space for social entrepreneurs began to be seriously compromised by the success of the space for events ... so combine both worlds it was becoming more difficult. So they decided to expand in an apartment available in the same building, just above the Hub ... and so appears HUBflat, a complement, support a bubble of concentration to defend and maintain the essence of the entrepreneurial community ... and as in the original Hub ... the floor was found intact from the 50s.
Subtraction A floor intact, with tremendous character, very compartmentalized to install a shared workspace ... how reform this atmosphere untouched, that domestic scale, the intimate feeling of a Madrid swept by the "design"? ... because playing without touching, touching without adding ... what if instead of add remove? What we remove? ... Remove visual disruption maintaining physical disruption, did a controlled demolition, strategic subtraction using a cone and two spheres acted figures for enjoyment and play devastating eye ... the eye?
The eye The eye is the instrument, the intermediary of our perception, the eye interprets, reread, uses memory sometimes wanting to see what you have already seen ... so you can play with it and we wanted to do in the HUBflat, get a space subject the eye to cheating, to wonder if this is a hole or a mirror, if what you see is the bounce or is beyond, to ask what happens when I move and everything falls back or defaced, altered space, broken , a space also play and surprises, unexpected appearances and visual spark altered perceptions, a space to invite entrepreneurs to play on.
