LIVING IN SPAIN

Living in Spain offers a journey through some of the country's most significant housing projects of the last fifty years (1975-2025), reflecting the challenge of designing worlds that are both personal and shared with others. The exhibition is structured in five sections, each dedicated to a decade, showcasing distinct socioeconomic, political, and environmental contexts.

Built works and unrealized projects are included to offer a glimpse into the ideals of Spanish domestic architecture, whose influence extends from local lifestyles to the international architectural scene. The decision to display scale models—85 in total—stems from the objective of highlighting their usefulness as a tool for synthesis with physical qualities. Through this collective landscape of models, we can appreciate their documentary value and the numerous insights they offer into the architectural work processes.

The exhibition also includes a selection of housing projects that lack a scale model but are essential to complete this retrospective view of the last 25 years of the 20th century and the first 25 of the 21st century, seen through 100 residential projects.

The models have been combined to create a kind of tapestry of singular episodes that have shaped the models of living and the relationship between people and their environment, clearly demonstrating that residential form determines urban form. The projects gathered belong primarily to the collective domestic sphere, although some single-family home projects are also included, considered in accordance with Alejandro de la Sota's view of the house as a testing ground for collective housing solutions. The intention is to suggest that the word "user" refers not only to those who reside in a dwelling, but also to those who are outside.

In the main room, the models are displayed in groups on a large ribbon that forms a kind of suspended table or collective swing, designed by clarasolamorales studio, to emphasize that the buildings, however individual they may be, all hang from the same thread.

At the entrance to the exhibition, one encounters the installation "Bedroom" by artist Isidro Blasco, who dissects the interior of a home and incorporates movement to remind us of the daily life that unfolds in small spaces, spaces that shape both personal biographies and the quality of life in a country. The mezzanine area serves as an epilogue to the exhibition, showcasing additional projects that complement the exhibition's narrative, as well as the model "HotelWelcome" by Arquitecturas Afectivas, which addresses the implications of evictions and the lack of affordable housing.

The project portfolio comprises 80 collective housing units and 20 single-family homes; over 50% are designed by women, and the models represent all of Spain's autonomous communities and the two autonomous cities, Ceuta and Melilla. Despite their differences, all the proposals share a common goal: to improve the lives of more people.