Monapart talk at Open House Madrid: a more sustainable home

Reusing existing elements, choosing natural materials or making spaces more flexible all contribute to better care for the environment. And it is also in your hands.

_{(Photo: Subliminal Image - Miguel de Guzmán and Rocío Romero).}

The Open House is the architecture and city festival held annually in more than 40 countries. After being Monapart one of the sponsors of Open House Madrid last year, this year we repeat and on this occasion, we invite to Elii [Architectural office]. to a talk to review solutions and materials when it comes to tackling a renovation, which will help us to have a more sustainable home.

She will be one of the founders of Elii, Eva GilThe project will tell us through various projects how reusing existing elements, choosing natural materials or making spaces more flexible, contributes to better care for the environment.

The talk will take place on 18 October in the Esparto room of the Impact Hub coworking centre on Calle Piamonte, 23. To attend, please register. here.

Elii [Architectural Office] was founded in 2006 by three architectural partners: Uriel FoguéEva Gil and Carlos Palacios. Since then they have designed and executed very diverse projects, ranging from public to private spaces, collective and individual housing, workspaces, refurbishment and renovation, ephemeral architecture, exhibition design, furniture design...

^{(Photo: Subliminal Image - Miguel de Guzmán and Rocío Romero).}

His latest project, OKIconsisted of the integral reform of a family home from the 70s to convert it to mixed use, as a home and as a professional office. A project where they implemented monitoring technologies for the energy consumption of the house that connect it with a larger scale ecological programme. 

For those of you who are regulars at Matadero events in Madrid, you have probably recently visited one of the exhibitions designed by them. The most recent one: Ecovisionaries, "Art for a planet in emergency". and the Cyborg Garden - Mutant Institute of Environmental NarrativesThe exhibition, in which they dealt in depth with the climate crisis and its relation to culture and the art world, was an exercise in responsible design. An exercise in responsible design, as they reused structures from previous exhibitions, used recycled or recyclable materials and, after the event, studied the second lives of materials and structures.

Going back a few years, in 2013, they received the COAM Award (Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid) for their housing project "House of Would", built in the town of Pedrezuela (north of Madrid). A good example of flexible organisation thanks to the modular system (which allows the functionality of the spaces to be altered at any time) and a fragmentary organisation: you can divide the house into a smaller one if you don't need to use it completely. And if you save space, you save energy...

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Here is the video summary of the talk: