70 SOCIAL HOUSING AND GARAGE IN MINA DEL MORRO, BILBAO

The site was a former iron mine, with a topography that had slopes of up to 50 meters, surrounded by a disorganized and degraded residential outskirts to the north and by the channeled Nervion River and the Miraflores peninsula and Miribilla to the south.

The assignment is the result of Europan IV Competition (Chema Lapuerta Francisco Burgos and architects, as in the Coslada project, and the rest of the team are from De Lapuerta & Asensio architects). Although we were working on the same plot of the competition, having less housing units and acting only in an edge, it seemed that the project had to start from different premises. It was not so and we became lucky and were able to apply, even radicalize the ideas of Europan.

Indeed, if we look at the panels awarded in the contest and read the ideas outlined, they are valid for that, but even more for the five towers finally executed:
"END and top off the edge of town. It was the responsibility of the proposed architecture to order against confusion. "
"CONVERT the upper street to a viewer street. The buildings will mark, surprise with different views different from the other side "
"PROJECT houses to look to the landscape and noon, the park and the streets"
"It is about SEWING vertically, assigning that role to the own building."

The result at the premises of the place and the intentions of the project are five residential  towers (only for its slenderness) perched on a stepped base (due to the sharp slope) that absorbs all the sector garages (four times more places than which correspond ) which is accessed by a new street below; intermediate semipublic squares looking at the views across the Nervion; all the living rooms facing the midday sun.

Five towers, slender drawers, black cellulose-cement as rain facades; the Naturvex graphite is riveted on double omegas in expansion. Sockets of prefabricated concrete with black washed aggregate : black gravel cover. Fronts to south and anodized aluminum joinery in its color.

DATA:

Architects: Jose Maria de Lapuerta and Francisco Burgos.

Team: Carlos Asensio. Associate architect / Architects: Elena de las Moras, Augustine Martin, Paloma Campo, Irene Zuniga, Eva Calleja. / Structure: Juan Carlos Salva / Quantity Surveyor: Juan Francisco Robles / Quantity Surveyor in construction: Luis Alberto Martinez

Promoter: Basque Government

Contruction: Ferrovial

Surface: 22,500 m2

Dates.Competition  Europan IV: 1996. Project:1998   Construction:2002-2005