Mares is the acronym for Mobility, Food, Recycling, Energy and Care. The project comprises the recovery and reuse of four old city buildings and turns them into innovation hubs distributed in four different districts. These hubs, call Mares, have as target the challenges facing the city.
Among the central objectives of mares is the creation of companies, the generation of a productive and community fabric and the promotion of good citizen and institutional practices that lead to a much more sustainable, healthy and cooperative city.
Project description by Estudio SIC - Todo por la praxis TXP
The city of Madrid is facing several challenges. In the economic field, since 2008 the impact of the economic crisis in Madrid has produced great transformations. Many jobs have been destroyed, and unemployment and poverty have become chronic in many sectors of the population. Inequalities have increased, as have the differences between the north and south of the city. On the other hand, it is necessary to change the city model in order to be able to face the environmental challenges. The environment and people's health are burdened by a model that generates pollution, energy dependence and voracious and unsustainable consumption. Finally, great distances and urban transport times, precariousness of work, demographic structure or lack of official support make it difficult for families to care for their elders, take care of children and the household chores.
Mares is a project of urban transformation and social economy. The project is developed around urban and economic resilience, that is to say, the capacity that people have together with technologies and ecosystems to adapt to unforeseen situations. Translated in the city of Madrid, this capacity refers to the numerous experiences that citizens have developed to face the crisis: self-employment initiatives, recovery of disused spaces or networks of economy or mutual support. Thus, among the central objectives of Mares is the creation of companies, the generation of a productive and community fabric and the promotion of good citizen and institutional practices that lead to a much more sustainable, healthy and cooperative city. Mares recovers and reuses 4 old city buildings and turns them into innovation hubs distributed in 4 different districts. These hubs, which we call Mares, are each linked to the challenges facing the city. Mares is the acronym for Mobility, Food, Recycling, Energy and Care. Because we cannot innovate without also putting the maintenance and sustainability of life at the centre.
A Mar is a space where people are linked with projects, projects with people and projects with projects. Each Mar is a spatial and material infrastructure that is available as a facilitating and linking element between different citizen projects. An ecosystem where citizen practices, associations and companies have a place to develop collectively. In this process, the hubs called Mares, accompanies the process of making your idea or initiative a productive project through the social and solidarity economy. The Mares are places where the multiplicity of ideas and profiles that feed the open innovationecosystem intensifies.
For the development of different devices of Mares four urban resources are enabled in disuse. An old school in Vallecas as a Mar of Mobility, a space in Villaverde as a Mar of Food, a new citizen infrastructure in Vicálvaro as a Mar of Recycling and an underused space in the Centre as a Mar of Energy. In each of the four districts there will be a space dedicated to the project, called MAR, which will serve as a knowledge laboratory and will house these new productive initiatives. These are buildings and public spaces that were in disuse, and will be enabled and made available to the public.
This recovery is being co-designed among a multitude of different agents. This design in resilience involves thinking in three terms. The first is that the design is not only an initial phase, but a continuous process that is linked to the existing. Second, the diversity of agents and technologies in design increase the resilience capacity. Finally, the agents co-produce the design in their strategy, but above all in the daily practice of the Mares and the generation of community in and out. In this way, Mares designs its spatial processes where the social, the material and the spatial are closely linked in the Mares with common endowments, equipment and resources.
So far, two of the Mares have been executed: the Mar of Energy and the Mar of Food. The two devices are interventions of interior conditioning that starts from the same strategies, although they are contextualized in each of the interventions responding to the conditions of each building and particular characteristics of each productive sector that is associated to each space. The Mar of Mobility and Recycling are currently under construction.
Mar of Energy and Mar of Food
So far two of the seas have been executed: the Mar of Energy and Mar of Food. The two devices are interior conditioning interventions that start from the same strategies, although they are contextualized in each one of the interventions responding to the conditions of each building and particular characteristics of each productive sector that is associated to each space.
The Mar of Energy has been adapted in the Puerta de Toledo pavilion-library, in a 1984 building designed by architect Juan Navarro Baldeweg. Three basic lines of action have been taken into account: the care of the building's material memory, the adaptation of the infrastructure for MARES activities and energy acupuncture. The latter consists of prioritising and choosing where to intervene energetically, such as, for example, transforming to LED lighting, monitoring consumption and reducing heat transmission through windows.
The Mar of Food has been adapted in a municipal space with more than 30 years that had a formative use and was managed by neighborhood entities and after a long trajectory was empty and unused. The intervention is articulated in four axes: the implementation of energy efficiency, the adaptation of the space for multiple uses, the connection of the space with the territory in which it is inscribed and the creation of a production space for projects and initiatives called GastroLab.
