Elcano is a treeless street in the district of Arganzuela, in Madrid. Recently, a series of industrial-like housing buildings amid more conventional ones have been built in the area. The project includes 13 apartments, 13 storage rooms, a garden with a swimming pool and an underground parking.

Arganzuela is a district of industrial and infrastructural genealogy, which in the second half of the 20th century began to incorporate other land uses.

Years ago, the district was occupied by low-rise buildings, warehouses, workshops and other secondary uses.

The volume is drilled with two double and triple height gaps: a car and pedestrian passage and a void in the facade that allows the natural ventilation of the garage.

With this gesture, the project adjusts the maximum built surface.

Two-story apartments in the lower part of the building open to the interior, southern garden. The rest of the levels host three 2-3-bedroom apartments per floor.

A penthouse with two additional houses tops the volume.

The apartments are organised based on contemporary criteria. The space is fluid, connecting corridors and kitchens with living areas through large sliding doors.

Continuous polished-cement floors, drywall partitions, floor-to-ceiling thresholds. Storage and wet rooms, as usual, are located in the central spine of the floorplan.

This compact volume faces two very different situations. The north facade faces a tense street. On the opposite, the south facade is sunny, and faces a garden and a pool.

In the area we can find a series of industrial buildings not explicitly related to the residential buildings in the area.

The north facade is built with prefabricated reinforced concrete horizontal panels following the floor levels, among which there is a series of light GRC pieces.

Some of these panels rotate functioning as shutters protecting the windows, which appear behind on the same geometrical basis.

The south facade, on the other hand, is deep, as a balcony or a gallery. It is built through the literal juxtaposition of a gallery: sunshades, some seating space and flowerpots provide a certain domestic character.

The facade is built through a series of pre-assembled metal frames incorporating both the gallery floor and the handrail, the pots and the sunshades that protect from the southern sun.

On the ground floor, both facades get in contact through the car passage. A strip of metal cladding folds inwards and forms the access, folding again to act as a basis between the street and the building.

Of the same color as the inner gallery