Sentkiewicz & MISC architects

ITINERARY

David Franco was winner of the Europan 7 competition, “suburban challenge” in 2003 on the site of Tromsø (N) with Renata Sentkiewicz. She opened her own practice in Madrid in 2006.
David Franco is working on an important landscape project following the Europan competition but on a bordering site. With Pablo Martínez, he runs MISC Arquitectos in Madrid.
Maintaining the affiliation with the Europan project, they seek to design flexible urban projects around intangible stress lines and concepts. Their speciality is the transformation of nature using artificial techniques, based on new rapprochements between architecture and landscape development. Their research focuses on an exploration of how artificial shapes can be inspired by natural forms. Is it possible to create buildings that resemble a mountain or a river?
David Franco finished his studies at the ETSA Madrid (2000). He then rounded off his training at the Faculty of architecture in Krakow, and at the Faculty of architecture of Braunschweig. He is a member of the Europan Technical Committee. Currently he teaches architecture at the SPCEU University in Madrid.
Pablo Martínez completed his studies at the ETSA Madrid (1999). He then rounded off his education at the Turin Faculty of Architecture. He currently teaches architecture at the SPCEU University in Madrid.

STRATEGY VS DESIGN

What if we could develop really flexible urban plans, which react with their own intelligence to all the possible contingencies related to investors, urban authorities or other sensitive agents? Maybe this kind of flexibility only happens when the strength of the concepts preserves its qualities from modification.

Tromsø (N) - Connected to landscape

Following the Europan competition, the implementation project has moved to the neighbourhood district, Kroken where there is a complete lack of a coherent urban structure.
The strategy proposes to find an identity that rediscovers what is beautiful about Kroken. Based on the landscape logics, functioning as a sequence of progressive growth through the addition of urban/landscaping elements, in such way that every step prepares the field for the next one. The quality of every urban element part of the proposal gets related to nature, and very especially to arctic landscape.

SCALE OF NATURE

Is it possible to create a building like a mountain? Or like a stone? Or like a river? Is it possible to utilize the scale and the meaning of landscape elements to create architecture? If it is then we need to understand the hidden rules by which we perceive and so on appreciate nature, and then apply this secret order into our buildings.

Lucena (E) - Between city and nature

By its scale, shape, colour and material, the theatre becomes the turning point between city and nature. When we face the city it incarnates into a rocky mountain with inclined walls of dark stone, when we face the river it appears to be a light glass pavilion. These changes do not become visible abruptly, they occur in a soft and progressive way, following the interior structure that circulates freely around the main hall. Along this ring we can find all types of architectural events and we can enter every single room and courtyard in the theatre, as if we were taking a walk around in our favourite park.

OBSERVATORY

The visual dominance of territory is a key subject both in architecture and landscaping. When the territory observed is a gigantic natural landscape and the onlooker is a small architectural device, a very special and powerful relationship is established. The basic categories we are used to utilize are suddenly transformed: private becomes public, large becomes small, artificial becomes natural and vice versa.

Santoña (E) - Outlook tower

The building rises from the surrounding residential fabric, but also anchors to the city by modulating its translucent abstract volume with the characteristic cornice found in the contiguous buildings. This tower is distributed in the simplest way: each of the floors presents a different height and contents a different program: exhibitions, workshop, mediatheque, offices and café. A horizontal patio penetrates the volume and links the interior spaces with a specific orientation of the surrounding landscape.

PROGRAMMED GROUND

We can charge a neutral soil with special landscape energy by combining and transforming over it simple programmatic rules that create new and surprising structures. These structures will react in a specific manner to the different conditions of border and topography in such way that something totally new will emerge form the existing ground.

Tromso (N) - Public park and life

The most important aim of the project for the New Public Park is to create inside the diffuse and unorganized urban structure of Kroken, a new spot capable to realize the elevated needs for exterior public spaces that the neighbourhood has now. The Park scheme is conceived as a collection of ‘rooms’ or colour patches that sets up a highly flexible functional structure where everyone at Kroken will be able to find a place where they feel comfortable, a place of their own, as it happens with the different rooms of a house.

Europan Generation, The reinterpreted city Catalogue
Editions: Cité de l’architecture and Europan, May 2007
224 colour pages, bilingual English/French


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