The Pitch House, by Iñaqui Carnicero, returns to be congratulated. After being awarded the Design Vanguard 2011, now has just won first prize Hauser Award 2012. This is an important prize of the German magazine in which competed over 120 houses around the world whose common feature was that the budget had been less than 1,500 euros per m2. Congratulations to Iñaqui and your team!

The house is located in a small neighbourhood on the west boundaries of Madrid in a place called “los Peñascales”, that mean something as well as great stones. The plot is characterized to have a great slope oriented to the south and have two great granite rocks partially covered by moss. The structure of the house at a functional level as formal is explained perfectly in section. The underground level is used to solve the encounter with the slope of the land.

It incorporates two granite rocks, one of them structurally and other as an articulation that makes the main access to the house. The ceiling of the underground level generates the white floor made of calcareus stone that constitutes the noble plane where the daily life is developed. A single space opened to the south only close by glass that disappears to incorporate the water plane of the swimming pool in a first plane and the mount named “el pardo” in a second.

This closure does not fit with the perimeter of the first floor but moves inside to generated two porches at the ends and a marquee on the front that allows the entrance of rays of the sun in winter and is protected of its impact during the warm months of summer. The first floor is been thought like a closed box made of concrete that floats over the glass of the ground floor. Here is where the rest of the rooms are organized as well as the zones destined to the study.

A unique bay window located at 1,40 meter of height allows to trim the skyline of the landscape and uniformly illuminates the concrete ceiling. The independence of levels is only interrupted by two double heights that put in relation both spaces described previously. The economic restrictions have caused that the house is solved with the minimal possible gestures that nevertheless generates a great diversity of spaces and attractive situations.

Architect.- Iñaqui Carnicero Alonso-Colmenares
Location.- Los Peñascales, Madrid, Spain
Technical Architect.- Manuel Iglesias
Contractor.- Antón Iakobiny Pitch S.L.
Client.- Guirao-Carnicero
Project Year.- 2005-2009
Photographs.- Courtesy of Iñaqui Carnicero

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Iñaqui Carnicero. 1973 Born in Madrid, Spain. Doctor of Architecture from the Polytechnic University of Madrid UPM 2015, unanimously awarded “Cum Laude” and received the professional title from the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid ETSAM in 1998.

2000-2011 Associate Professor of Projects at the E.T.S.Arquitectura of Madrid. 2000 Guest at the Venice Biennale. 2002 Honorable Mention Luigi Cosenza Prize. 2003 Honorable Mention C.O.A.M. Awards. 2008 JAE Exhibition. Young Spanish Architects. 2008 Scholarship of Fine Arts from the Royal Spanish Academy in Rome. 2009 Finalist in the Architectural Digest Awards. 2010 Selected for the BSI University of Mendrisio Awards. 2010 Finalist FAD Awards. 2011 Design Vanguard Award 2011. Architectural Record. 2011 Emerging Architecture Awards. Architectural Review. 2011 First Prize Hauser award 2012. 2011 Developing Doctoral Thesis: “Louis Kahn vs Robert Venturi: Learning from the scale of Rome”.

In addition to his professional work as an architect, he has developed activity in the fields of teaching, research and curating, responding to housing, urban and revitalization issues of the existing architectural fabric.

He has been a visiting professor at various international universities, including Cornell University, Columbia, Yale and MIT. His work has been internationally recognized with awards such as the Golden Lion at the 2016 Venice Biennale, the AIA New York Housing Design Award 2015, the Hauser Award 2012, the Design Vanguard 2011, the FAD Architecture Award 2012, and the COAM Award 2012.

From June 2020 until his appointment as Secretary General of the Urban Agenda and Housing in February 2023, he held the General Directorate of the Urban Agenda and Architecture.

During his time at the previous Ministry, he promoted the drafting of the first state law on the quality of Architecture, which was approved in June 2022 in the Senate without any votes against.

It has also worked to improve the public building stock through the design of an innovative building rehabilitation programme included in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR), called PIREP (Plan to Promote the Rehabilitation of Public Buildings), and endowed with 1,080 million euros. This programme, in line with the Law on the Quality of Architecture, in addition to promoting improvements in the energy efficiency of buildings, emphasises the importance of addressing the rehabilitation of public buildings from a comprehensive perspective.

In addition, it has continued with the development and implementation of the Urban Agenda, including an investment in the PRTR that has allowed the financing of 117 pilot projects of Local Action Plans of the Urban Agenda.

Iñaqui Carnicero has contributed to the dissemination of Spanish architecture in the national and international context, defining the framework themes of the last 5 editions of the Architecture Biennials promoted by this ministry: the Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (BEAU), the Ibero-American Biennial (BIAU) and the Spanish participation in the Venice Biennale. He has also opted for the formula of the ideas competition as a mechanism for selecting the commissioners of these exhibitions.

In his role as "National Contact Point" of the New European Bauhaus (NEB), he has promoted debate meetings and dissemination days between the different institutions, associations and professionals who are working on this initiative, in addition to promoting the first Spanish pavilion at the NEB festival in Brussels in 2022.

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Published on: March 22, 2012
Cite: "First Prize Hauser Award 2012: House 1+1=1 (Pitch´s House) by Iñaqui Carnicero" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/first-prize-hauser-award-2012-house-111-pitchs-house-inaqui-carnicero> ISSN 1139-6415
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