Ocaña de España

OCAÑA DE ESPAÑA.
O cuando el figurativismo duele.

El proyecto es una performace ultrarrealista sobre el mercado inmobiliario, en formato de encargo de 53 viviendas entre medianeras, con altura B+3.
Sucumbimos a los incuestionables deseos de un creativo promotor privado de construir un edificio conquense por fuera y muy moderno por dentro. Se le planteó construir el edificio como una réplica de las casas colgantes de Cuenca. Las dos primeras plantas serían la roca (construida con técnicas de tematización como las ejecutadas en Port Aventura) y las dos últimas, unas casas costumbristas apoyadas en ella, rematadas con cubiertas de lona con serigrafía de tejas árabes.  El conjunto es el edificio residencial Ocaña de España.

En el proyecto convergen realidades entrecruzadas que van desde las fosas abisales de la cultura popular al Realismo Operatorio de Bourriaud. Y tiene mucho de actitud osada y crítica que incita a la reflexión, y no solo sobre arquitectura. Invita a reflexionar sobre el exceso de repertorio arquitectónico, el vértigo de la inversión inmobliaria, la influencia de los medios y, además,  manifiesta la amenaza omnipresente del fin del capitalismo que conocemos. También navega por los océanos del Fake. Es como el fosil de Hello Kitty, o un Mickey Mouse.
Es decir Las Casas Colgantes de Cuenca y nuestro edificio tienen la misma imagen aunque no comparten significados.
Todo esto es Ocaña de España

OCAÑA DE ESPAÑA.  
Or when figurativsim hurts.

This project for 53 dwellings between party walls can be described through its tectonic (Roca Port Aventura in the stereotomic plinth of the two first floors of housing, plus buildings that, resting on the former, are rounded off with canvas roofs with silkscreen-printed tiles). Or through its virtues of “non-extrusion” (the 20% of the columns does not reach the foundations directly so it can fit the promotion’s program radically) and “non-metaphor” (the explicit denies it).

Even it could be labelled as Cynic Regionalism. But the best way to explain this bizarre, unbridled, dislocated and autistic project is with a generous text by Roberto González García:

The project Ocaña de España stemmed from a commission that, from the outset, was determined by a referent that ought not to be questioned: the developer and, at the same time, contractor. This client wanted to build in Ocaña a project “from Cuenca on the outside”, but "all-out modern’ on the inside”. We suggested building the Hanging Houses of Cuenca, or rather, a representation of these that could transfer, one by one, the most characteristic features of the historic complex, in an almost literal manner. Hence the recreation had to be achieved building the rock on the two first floors and completing the two following ones with the aforementioned Hanging Houses, a replica in every sense.

The assignment develops the sense of the copy in its own plane of reality, a common place where its projected the elongated shadow of so stereotyped concepts as tradition and vanguard, modernity or originality, that aspire to provide identity to the complex.: an avant-garde interior, adapted to the necessities of the modern live that from the outside refers to the traditional architecture, giving to the proposal a great originality. Clichés, that because of its indiscriminate repetition ends up digressing from its original sense.

The formalization of the replica began with the rigorous transcription, word for word, of the attributes that define the objective of the project. Where it says rock, rock. The typical lookouts of Cuenca and the quaint volumetry are gradually superimposed in the design so that it appears to be literal, even though it is not truly so. Literal? Without a figurative sense? Is the gaze really so innocent? Here, at least two realities intertwine, but there are more, as many as there are senses that one can or wishes to give. There where figurate comes from the inner conditions and where each one just inhabits its own reality. The scheme of the project rests on the same foundations those two levels of reality so often doomed to meet and perhaps to not understand one another, which insert architecture in the field of the production of goods that, despite having the same form, do not share the same meanings. An experiment by way of operational realism (Bourriaud, 2001) that represents the drama of architecture in parody key. After all, one must be very serious to not enjoy a comedy.