MINIMO
Juggling responsibilities
Madrid, ES

MINIMO is an architecture studio specialized in the optimisation of space that arises to respond to a generational demand: we want to live big. Founded by Alberto Rubial and Sergio Sánchez as the natural evolution of rubial-sánchez, they do architecture while collaborating with technical, engineering and landscaping offices. MINIMO is based in Madrid, Spain.

 

A natural transition

We have worked together since the first years of university and the transition to professional practice came naturally. First doing competitions during our student days and then with the first professional commissions at the end of the degree while we were working at other studios.

At one point, the commission of the integral renovation of a small house in Barcelona coincided with the selection of one of our projects for the second phase of a big national competition for a Nearly Zero Energy Building. In that moment, we made the decision to look for a permanent workspace, leave our freelance collaborations with other practices and open our own studio.

 

Challenges solved by creative thinking

The bad stories are not worth mentioning, and we keep the good ones to ourselves. Creativity is just as important when it comes to generating good architecture projects as it is when you have to generate better work contexts where good architecture can be thought up and later be built. This can be applied equally well to the development of competitions, to the generation of new job opportunities, the negotiation with potential clients and suppliers, the communication of the finished work as well as any other interaction that occurs during the daily work in the studio.

 

Finding healthy a balance for work

We are not heroes at all and we hate architectural ones. We are architecture workers and businessmen, and we believe that having a healthy social and cultural life it is essential to develop good architecture. In the same way, having a healthy economic balance in the studio is basic. Usually work starts around 9am and finishes near 7pm. We would love to abolish night-time work in architecture

 

Juggling responsibility between ourselves

We are currently two partners and we have several regular collaborators who work with us depending on the workload. We, in general, work on all the projects together, but we are always changing the roles of responsibility according to the phase of the project in which we feel more comfortable. We believe in specialisation, and each one of us contributes to all the projects, but normally in the same areas, to develop the best projects possible. Usually Alberto takes the responsibility in the early stages and I take it in the later ones.

 

Making it as newcomers in the industry

Our initial expectations were a bit naive, conditioned by the references we were accustomed to from university and from architecture magazines and books. One important data is that none of our families had any architectural or building background, and access to architecture business knowledge is not easy for "foreigners". MINIMO arrived some years later as a more mature and thought-through project, where optimisation of space is a key value and we focus on residential projects where we have had some of our best previous professional experience.

 

Making a living doing architecture

The greatest challenge is always to find the balance between the systematisation of processes, the economic performance of projects and the highest architectural quality that is always sought as the final objective. Make a living from architecture, doing good architecture. We are MINIMO and we want to live big.



MINIMO 01 COLOR

M Equipo Sergio Sanchez

Photography courtesy of MINIMO

M 01 IMG M02 3 Amores Pictures Sergio Sanchez

M 01 IMG M01 8 Sergio Sanchez

M INS M03 02 Sergio Sanchez

M INS M03 04 Sergio Sanchez

Photography Amores Pictures

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