Glimpses of a laundry

From a scopic to a somatic riverfront

Master thesis (2024)

Authors

D.M. Hoinarescu Architecture and the Built Environment

Contributors

J.P.M. van Lierop Theory, Territories & Transitions - Architecture and the Built Environment (mentor)
H.F. Eckardt Architectural Technology - Architecture and the Built Environment (graduation committee member)
A.S. Alkan Theory, Territories & Transitions - Architecture and the Built Environment (graduation committee member)
Faculty
Architecture and the Built Environment, Architecture and the Built Environment
More Info
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Published Date

26-06-2024

Language

English

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Faculty

Architecture and the Built Environment

Abstract

The lack of connection between the city and the Manzanares riverbank represents the project’s exoskeleton. The use of the Manzanares as a laundry historically and the metaphorical use of today expose issues related to the relationship between the water, its use and its connection to the city’s inhabitants. Approaching the topic from the water’s point of view, it unfolds along its multiple courses as a narrative thread unveiling its arcs, which all resolve in the Manzanares river. The site location has been selected according to the historical importance and only few soft boundaries between hard borders created along the river by the underground M30 highway. The lack of connection to the river of Manzanares could also signify a detachment to one’s own unconscious according to Jung’s theory regarding water as a metaphor for the stream of the unconscious. According to Peter Sloterdijk architects are designers of immersion. For humans, one of the most primal forms of it is the immersion into water.

One of the most obvious yet unexplored and historically overlooked promenades is the Manzanares river in Madrid. The project represents a set of architectural interventions along the riverbank that create new links to the city while also proposing continuation of the . Choosing the area around the Segovia bridge as the main site for unveiling the connection to the water as is linked to the historical importance of the bridge crossing, to the physical connection to underwater stormwater tanks and a tangential point between the city of Madrid and the river. While the M30 highway is hidden under the new MadridRIO project and has represented a rejuvenation of the riverbank, it also created a hard border that delimitates the river from the city and the experience of it. An exception of this issue represents the area around the Segovia bridge where, due to engineering issues and previous urban planning, the Manzanares could essential break free and explore the soft boundaries that a riverbed can offer to the city.