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Itinerary
We live wrapped in plastic. In supermarkets, kiosks, clothes shops... but also in our homes and flats. The windows through which light streams, the laminate floors we walk on, the paints that colour the walls, the cables and pipes that serve us - they all make use of plastic to make the spaces we inhabit work. And yet it is quite difficult to point to buildings that are made of plastic. Perhaps because the synthetic origin of this material, its environmental impact and its cost lead it to concentrate on all those layers of architecture that we do not usually see, such as sheeting, insulation or installations.
Itinerary curated by
Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (MITMA)
Ministerio de Vivienda y Agenda Urbana
Means of transport
In this itinerary, however, we will be able to walk through a series of buildings that shift the plastic towards more visible layers, and that take advantage of its capacity to take on a myriad of shapes, colours, textures and levels of transparency to envelop surprising spaces. As happens in the Matadero Madrid. Cineteca and its interior braided with plastic hoses, the act of bringing such a discreet element to the surface produces an architecture that captivates our attention.Even when the material does its best to become transparent and disappear, as in the Carpa al Restaurant Les Cols, the plastic becomes the protagonist of the spatial and culinary experience.
In the rest of the works on the itinerary we will find it more in view, defining the character of façades that display part of the repertoire of compositions and forms that this material offers us. From the flat, cold surfaces that envelop the Official Association of Architects of Vigo or the Extension and improvement of the Sewage Treatment Plant of San Claudio, to the rough, striated skin of the Single family home in Sanxenxo, all of them made of polycarbonate. From the large EFTE cushions that build the image of the Media-TIC Building in Barcelona, to the polyester fibre that fills with colour the Medialab-Prado or the plexiglass that dissolves the Studio en verde among the vegetation on the outskirts of Madrid.
Colour, transparency, lightness, insulation, durability... these are properties that we can synthesise as we walk through each of these buildings and become enveloped in their plastics. It is sure to be a unique experience. But not only because they are unique, high-quality works, but above all because the oil-derived nature of plastic makes it inevitable that their use will be exceptional. In the 21st century, thinking about a plastic architecture brings with it a conflict which, nevertheless, needs to be made visible in order to make it an object of reflection.