Light Wells

The project is located in the Lavapiés neighborhood, in Madrid. Its goal is to to solve a problem in the neighborhood, inherited from its initial medieval conception: the lack of health and hygiene requirements. This is due to the narrowness of the streets and the density of the buildings that prevents a good quality of lighting and ventilation in the apartments.

The project seeks to provide the neighborhood with better lighting and ventilation of private spaces. The operation consists of the installation of ‘light wells’ that would pass through the floor slabs from the roof. These wells cover the whole neighborhood, organized in an homogeneous way taking into account the existing courtyards. To design a system with mathematical coherence, the so-called voronoi diagrams are used. It is one of the simplest interpolation methods, based on the euclidian distance. Each existing yard is accounted as one point. The new light wells would complete the empty or "dark areas" to homogenize the entry of light into the neighborhood. Institutional buildings are not taken into account, as they have different characteristics.

The project also opens up the ground floor to the public space. This allows a reduction of the total number of vertical communications. Those that can be removed are replaced by light wells, keeping only those necessary to comply with the fire safety regulations: every 25 m.

A new treatment of the courtyards is carried out: both the existing and the new. It's about achieving a unity in all of them, taking into account the orientation. The south face of the patios will be fully open. The north face will be closed and covered with a vertical garden. The east and west faces will have openings at 2m height to allow a lighting and ventilation connection, keeping the privacy of the neighbors.

The ground floor is a diaphanous space (including vertical communications, patios and semi-closed spaces) of 9,650 m². It is a visually continuous public space. The rest of the floors are dedicated to housing and have a maximum capacity of 800 inhabitants, the same as before the transformation.

The project solves current health problems at a neighborhood scale. All apartments have cross-ventilation and direct solar lighting, keeping the privacy of the inhabitants. At the same time it creates a new situation at a urban level, a continous space of interaction, harmony between activities and meeting place. There is visual permeability keeping a sound separation. Light, reflections and variability through the hours of the day. The punctual inputs of natural light do not concur exactly with the limits of the ground floor spaces, creating numerous intermediate spaces.