Integration of adaptive re-use approaches into architectural design: “Las cocheras de Cuatro Caminos” and the value of industrial heritage of the city of Madrid.

This work explores the practice of adaptive re-use applied to the phenomenon of obsolescence that buildings and sites pass through as consequence of the crisis that suppose the natural passage of time and the rupture with the economic, socio-cultural and normative ties that once sustained architectural elements with its past context. And pose it as a possible solution to the complicated situation that Las Cocheras de Cuatro Caminos is going through in the city of Madrid, where even being recognized as an important part of the Spanish industrial heritage are in danger of extinction due to the high value of its land. With this objective, the work begins with a research composed of a verb: re-use, and a subject: the industrial heritage. Addressed in part, to highlight the historical/typological value intrinsic in the buildings that belong to Las Cocheras de Cuatro Caminos, and at the same time, understand how the adaptive re-use as methodology could be compatible and applicable to the complex, which today runs the risk of disappearing. This work understands the disappearance as a loss and seeks in its reactivation the opportunity to provide Chamberí and the Spanish capital with new public, cultural and residential infrastructure, without sacrificing the added value of the memory that resides in the place. This text explores the past, through the history of the industry, its architecture and link with the design of Cuatro Caminos, passing through the relevant intervention of Antonio Palacios and the importance of the metropolitan company of Madrid, in order to understand its value as Spanish industrial heritage. Analyse present, reviewing the qualities and circumstances of similar international and local cases of adaptive re-use which are currently going through a renewed validity. And wants to look to the future, being the product of this work an architectural project based on the adaptive re-use of most of the existing structures, proposing a new mix of activities that respond to the needs of both, the district where it belong and the city, diluting the physical and architectural separations with their surroundings to integrate the industrial complex into the city and involving private and public interests without sacrificing the intrinsic memory of the place.