NATURE AND CONCRETE. ESPAI VERD

Espai Verd, work of the CSPT studio architectural lead by Antonio Cortes Ferrando, is a singular building of modular architecture in space, located in the neighbourhood of Benimaclet, Valencia. It dates back to the beginning of the 1980s and it was achieved by the system of owners cooperative. The main concept, the starting point, is to materialize dwellings with private garden, placed inside a high multi-family building. Therefore, the main characteristic of this work is the integration of nature as part of the building and the necessary development of a constructive system capable of containing vegetation, highlighting the use of exposed concrete in situ and prefabricated. The design was influenced by the architectural trends at that time, brutalism and megastructure, in addition to having multiple individual references as the works of Moshe Safdie, Ricardo Bofill and Jose Antonio Coderch, among others. The text shows some strategies and decisions taken in this project that determine the formal aspect of the building and, at the same time, reveal the intense interaction between nature and concrete in Espai Verd.