The funeral home, by means of its domestic scale and natural textures, resembles a big rural patio-house
The building will be located in the outskirts of Madrid, in a generic industrial area, close to the highway but facing an old forest with a small park. Given this harsh location, the first approach aims towards a self-contained volume, somehow introvert, occupied by patios and different light-wells, organizing a complex programme through successive subdivisions of a rectangular envelope.
Due to the nature of its activities, car access becomes a main issue in the design, with most people arriving and leaving swiftly and on a continuous basis. Arrival by car, and subsequent pedestrian strolls as part of the experience, incorporates parking space as another enclosed patio, and extends enclosures to carefully laid out gardens, which relate to the existing forest.
Interior planning is strategically disposed as to, on the one hand, achieve the required hierarchies between non-overlapping activities and privacies, and on the other understand contemporary funeral homes as another sort of public space, where people inevitably meet, talk and get together. A second, more intimate patio, lies adjacent to the church and may extend certain ceremonies to the outdoors.
Materiality arises from the wish to offer an atavistic feeling, as if a construction with a rural origin had existed in the site before the industrial sheds occupied the land. Thus, hand-made bricks, manufactured in the nearby area of La Mancha region and its millenary potteries tradition, will be used extensively, together with singular lattices that will filter the strong western Madrid evening sun.
In the centre of the construction, inside each small patio of the private wake rooms, a single Japanese maple, symbol of life, will be planted.
Project: Funeral Home in Madrid
Status: Competition - First Prize (2024) Under development
Client: Private
Location: Madrid
Team: Jacobo García-Germán, María Valdés, Clara Corrales, Nereida González
Consultants: Jaime Matesanz (quantity surveyor) Pulso Studio (visualizations), La Paloma Cerámicas (brick & façade consultants)
