Most of these industrial spaces are located on the ground floors of residential buildings, extending beyond the building’s footprint into interior courtyards. In a cityscape now dominated by residential and commercial uses, these large-volume spaces are no longer needed. Urban planning policies prioritize reclaiming these courtyards, often through the demolition of industrial structures, supported by zoning changes that convert industrial properties into residential use. The most drastic transformation involves limiting the depth of new construction, making residential redevelopment of these industrial buildings unfeasible unless they are partially demolished. The financial incentive for these changes lies in the real estate market, where land values can triple or quadruple when converted into residential properties—largely driven by Madrid’s inflated rental market.

The key to preserving these spaces lies in hybrid uses. These industrial buildings cannot be understood rigidly; they require a more fluid approach to occupancy that takes advantage of their spatial qualities while balancing the costs of adaptation. Elements for Industrial Recovery explores urban and architectural tools to retain these structures in a context that otherwise incentivizes their disappearance.
CNM was originally a storage space characterized by a large, continuous pitched roof and nearly opaque lateral walls. The redesign opens this space up, reflecting the vision of its new owner—an artist whose work explores perceptual distortion through technology and digital media. Based on that, the project creates a distorted spatial experience using layered materials, shifting transparencies that transform into reflections, and interior spaces that seem to dissolve into exteriors.

The design materializes in a monumental outer wall composed of a large colonnade with a textured plaster finish. Regularly spaced openings combine fixed glass panels with overlapping sliding doors, creating a seamless interplay of transparency and reflection. The roof’s continuity is preserved as a defining element, visible from any point in the space and strategically perforated to bring natural light into key areas. The interplay between the uninterrupted roofline and the grand colonnade generates a series of overlapping spaces where interior and exterior boundaries blur, creating a dynamic depth of field.

Two distinct material volumes provide intentional contrast and serve as spatial anchors, marking the beginning and end of the journey through the space. The first is a bold yellow volume near the entrance, containing restrooms, storage, and mechanical systems. The second is a wooden structure at the far end of the building, housing additional functional elements and concluding the interior narrative.
The furnishing strategy reinforces the theme of spatial indeterminacy through a collection of movable objects. These pieces are designed to flow between zones, enabling different uses to migrate across the space. Each object is proportioned to pass through the arches, facilitating movement and interaction between areas.

By embracing flexibility, preserving architectural heritage, and integrating hybrid functions, CNM offers a forward-thinking model for the adaptive reuse of industrial spaces in a rapidly evolving urban context.

Text provided by the architects.

Eulalia Gil was a warehouse of disparate objects. Remains of unclaimed family properties, discarded furniture, books in poor condition and many other objects. A space determined more by its content than by its function as a container. Unconsciously it was this condition that guided the renovation project: a space shaped this time by the collection of objects of its new inhabitant. 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.
In line with this idea, the interventions that do not directly affect the walls and deck are treated as objects that add to this collection. Specifically a staircase and a gate are developed to connect and isolate a small space of intimacy for the inhabitant. These elements contrast with the rest of the building due to their color, materiality and shape. 
Eulalia focuses on the content rather than the container, centering the experience on the different relationships that these objects establish with each other.

Text provided by the architects.

In the process of locating Clara’s sleeping place, we thought of making a wheeled bed, a cabin, a box with windows … until we decided to detach ourselves from the ground. We thereby provide a horizon in the warehouse; a connection with the outside that we believe necessary for mental health. It ended up being the project’s highlight: a very light, semi-hanging platform, which in turn supports a small elevation of the roof. We designed this structure with Manuel Ocaña; 20mm steel rounds working on compression and suspension, and 8mm corrugated rods in tension. The platform accepts a maximum of 5 people on it, so we made a ladder with wheels that could hide: skinny habits.

Text provided by the architects.

Andreu Carulla is responsible for TRAMO’S staging and furniture, based on modularity as the constant construction throughline in all elements. Carulla has created a system with over one thousand ceramic modules that are craftsman-made. They form part of a natural heating and cooling system based on Provençal wells, integrated into the space through a series of continuous benches. These extrusion-molded ceramic modules, produced by Ceràmiques Est, in La Bisbal (Girona), have a double role: they thermally channel air from outside, and also act as a seat for the diner. In addition to the ceramic conduits, modularity was applied to the rest of the furniture in TRAMO (chairs, tables, and lamps), with a system of extruded aluminum parts that can be assembled inside the premises, like a construction set.

TRAMO is an almost 100% energetically self-sufficient restaurant. It is also a PPA space (Power Purchase Agreement), meaning that it generates green energy. TRAMO uses a misting system to naturally manage the temperature and humidity in the restaurant. In addition to watering the plants in the venue, this misted water moistens the space, as well. The space also has different systems to reuse rainwater, sink water, and moisture from the earth.

Acoustic comfort is provided at TRAMO by Geopannel, panels made of recycled and pressed wool under the ceiling. All leftover material after putting it on the ceiling was used to cushion the continuous benches. Reclaimed textiles were also used for the lamps designed by Andreu Carulla which are made with sections of threaded rod reclaimed from construction on the venue, which are normally used in false ceilings. The paper disk was made with recycled cotton and by hand by Sastres Paperers, a craftsman paper workshop in Molino de la Farga (Banyoles, Girona).

Text provided by the architect.

This rational approach to redistributing and conceptualizing spaces is visually disrupted by the introduction of two circular granite surfaces that deviate from the established order. These surfaces blur the lines between different areas, connecting them and accommodating various functions along their path.

This break with the inherent order of space is emphasized by the material and chromatic choices, applied as a pop collage, reflecting the client’s lifestyle and preferences. In this sense, a variety of materials such as national granite, birch plywood, sandy ceramic tile flooring, blue porcelain stoneware, varnished yellow MDF board, mirrors, and various metallic elements painted in green are introduced. The goal is to endow the new home with a timeless quality from the 21st century, connecting the multiple times of inhabiting the dwelling while preserving the textures and traces of the existing surfaces, reflecting the previous life of the residence.

Text provided by the architect.

Adjacent to this public area appears the private pillbox, composed of two twin and symmetrical bedrooms, one facing the main façade and the other facing the interior patio.

Unlike the neutral and white public space, each of the bedrooms is completely bathed in a color chosen by its inhabitants.

Between both spaces, public and private, an elongated and narrow tablet is proposed that acts as a filter and houses the wet areas of the house.

As if it were a ritual, this humid ‘cloud’ is crossed to move from the most private spectrum to the public area.

This ‘cloud’ is elevated with respect to the ground level of the home to allow the passage of the facilities to the main downspout, but also to reinforce the transition from the public space, open and white, with a free height of 3 meters, to the private space. , colored and collected.

Two large curved doors give way to these rooms. All the interior surfaces of this ‘filter space’ are finished in glass mosaic of 2.5 x 2.5 cm pieces installed on the curved walls using preformed meshes, and on the floor in a handmade way, piece by piece aligned with the curve as it meets the walls in concentric circles.

Text provided by the architect.

A more-than-human assembly as the school’s heart. The second floor, formalized as a large void opened through landscape-scale arches to the surrounding ecosystems, is conceived as the school’s main social plaza. Here the architecture encourages teachers and students to participate in school government and to interact with the surrounding landscapes and territories. This 5,000 square-feet central area is over 26 feet high and conceived of as a cosmopolitical agora; a semi-enclosed space crisscrossed by the air tempered by the holm oak trees from the neighboring countryside. A network of ecologists and edaphologists designed small gardens specifically made to host and nurture communities of insects, butterflies, birds, and bats. Here, mundane activities like exercising coexist with discussions about how the school is run as a community and what is the way to relate to the neighboring streams and fields. Ultimately, this floor operates as a more-than-human summiting chamber where students and teachers can sense and attune to the ecosystems they are part of.

Visibility of mechanical systems as a pedagogical opportunity. As an alternative to architecture’s common efforts to hide mechanical systems, where all services are kept visible so that the flows that keep the building active become an opportunity for students to interrogate how their bodies and social interactions depend on water, energy, and air exchanges and circulations. The building unapologetically allows pipes, conduits, wires, and grilles to become part of its visual and material ecosystem.

Thinning, skinning, and making fluffy as an affordable environmental strategy. In the context of Southern Europe, where high-tech sustainable solutions are only available to high-budgeted, corporate or state-promoted buildings, this building develops a low-budget strategy to reduce its environmental footprint based on the following design principles:
1. Verticality to reduce land occupation. Instead of opting for a horizontally- expanding land occupation – as is the case for 90% of school designs – Reggio School is a compact vertical building. This design decision minimizes the building’s footprint, optimizes the overall need for foundations, and radically reduces its façade rate.
2. Radical reduction of the construction. No claddings, no drop ceilings, no raised technical floors, no wall lining, and no ventilated façades are used in this building. The overall amount of material used in the facades, roofs, and interior partitions of the building has been reduced by 48% just by replacing a big part of the construction with simple strategies of thermal insulation and mechanical systems distribution. The result presents a naked building where the non-edited visibility of its operating components defines its aesthetics.
3. A thick wrapping of living isolation. Cork wrapping is both thermal isolation and support to more-than-human life. 80% of the envelope of the building is externally covered by a 14.2 cm of projected 9,700 Kg/m3 dense cork. This natural solution, specifically developed by the Office for Political Innovation for this project, is used both in vertical and pitch parts of the building’s external volume to provide a thermal isolation of R-23.52, double that of what Madrid’s regulations require. This adds to the passive 50% reduction of consumed energy when heating of the school’s interiors. Beyond this, the irregular surface of the cork projection is designed to allow organic material to accumulate, so that the envelope of the building will eventually become the habitat of numerous forms of microbiological fungi, and vegetal and animal life.
4. More thinking, less material. Led by researcher and structural engineer Iago González Quelle, the team has shaped, analyzed, and dimensioned the building’s structure so that the thickness of loading walls can be reduced by an average of more than 150 mm compared to conventional reinforced concrete structures. Overall, this implied a 33% reduction in the embedded energy of the building’s structure.

Text provided by the architect.

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The program is atypical and, paradoxically, its novelty consists in being old and almost forgotten: accommodating a family nucleus made up of three generations. Hence the configuration in two pavilions. In addition, the organization of the floor exceeds the traditional distribution of “main bedrooms” and “children”: whatever the family organization, the rooms will be occupied by the decision of its inhabitants, not by imposition of the house.
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Shadow spaces are sought, continuity inside/outside (the enclosure of the patio is hidden and disappears, aspiring to remain open from March to October), and that the tours of the house are endless circuits, that the house is a continuous space where run from one place to another, play and escape, without routes with an inevitable end.

Text provided by the architect.