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"AZCA Report" financial district. Madrid

Working in the competition for AZCA, the main square in the financial center in Madrid, we put together a report of what we discovered. AZCA became well known by the Windsor building getting in fire in 2005. AZCA was a symbol of modernization during the seventies and eighties; during the day was the financial center and during the night the place to go for drinks. In the nineties started its decays and now homeless and drug-dealers occupy it. We find out that the main problem in AZCA is not their architecture but the gender division of the plaza. The main face of AZCA in Castellana, is male/public/business: offices; the back face of AZCA in Orense Street, is female/domestic: apartment houses, shopping; at night below street level, nightclubs and bars. This program distribution worked for the society of Spain in the seventies but it doesn't work for the society of the XXI century. To solve the problem of AZCA we have to start by breaking with the gender division.

This report was made by the office of architecture OSS (Open Source Space) Ángel Borrego Cubero with the collaboration of Jana Leo in the summer of 2006. We can see images of the whole project here:
http://www.o-s-s.org/suic-orca-0-es.html

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