El Capricho- Superimpose Madrid´s identity to the generic infrastructure

Madrid´s identity is formed by its recognizable buildings, either because of its geometry, its constructive and structural solution or its individuality. Those that stand out above the rest and are identified as identity of the city.

These singularities are arranged in Madrid from east to west and from south to north until we reach Chamartín, where we have to incorporate the new Station: an infrastructure added to the city that should not be generic.

This exercise is the proposal of an infrastructure in which the history of the city is recognized. That is not generic, but concentrate specialties. The design will no longer be indifferent to formal debates, as Stan Allen defends in his text Urban Infrastructures. According to his proposals, it´s a mistake to think that infrastructures can allow new freedoms, but this exercise proposes new forms and solutions based on his last sentence: In infrastructural urbanism, the form matters, but more for what it can do than for its appearance.

The project should be understood as a presentation of the city that enhances its character, an infrastructure that projects the image of Madrid, and takes advantage of its location to assume the responsibility to become its new door.

The developed system takes as a design tool the geometries extracted from the Madrid´s constructive identity, and the infrastructure as the set of rules that characterize a transport-hub.

The answer is a formal exercise, a spatial speculation, a superposition of the city´s identity to a generic infrastructure: A whim, "Capricho". By definition, a work that by means of ingenuity and fantasy, breaks with the usual models.