ignacio g. galán
[ igg - office for architecture ]

New York / Madrid
igg@ignaciogalan.com
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A Suburban Celebration! Gallery

Longitudinal Section

Floorplan first (bottom) and second floor (top)

[construction images coming soon]

Multi-family house in the outskirts of Madrid. With TallerDe2 (Arantza Ozaeta and Alvaro Martin Fidalgo)

Madrid (Spain)/ 2019- (under construction)

Multi-family kin explores networks of care across generations beyond the nuclear family within a small residential project in the outskirts of the city. Located at the end of a row of single-family houses, the project combines different housing typologies in each of the three floors. While none of the domestic arrangments accommodated in these typologies neatly responds to the needs of a conventional family, together they facilitate multifamily kin: The main floor is organized as a loft for an aging couple that has increasing mobility difficulties; above it, a compartmentalized sequence of rooms and living spaces aims to alternatively host the couple’s guests and the attendants that will assist them when they are alone; the lower level hosts a one-bedroom apartment that the couple will rent to students in the neighboring university. The three levels establish different degrees of independence while sharing some spaces, including the garden. The project thus counters hegemonic notions of the family as an autonomous and stable social unit, and acknowledges the relations of dependency between the inhabitants and their environments--celebrating their expanded and malleable networks. 

 

[image gallery]

Ignacio G. Galán [igg – office for architecture] + SOF-T / TallerDE2 (Arantza Ozaeta and Alvaro Martin Fidalgo).

Collaborators: Ana Herreros, Pablo Sainz del Río, Jorge Sedano.

Acordeón Office Sidebar

  • About Open or Close

    [igg - office for architecture] is a design and research office based in New York City and led by Ignacio G. Galán, PhD. Our work focuses on architecture's role in the articulation of society through design projects, research, and pedagogical endeavors. The designs of the office have been awarded in competitions including the First Prize for the New Velodrome in Medellín and are part of the permanent collection of the Pompidou Center. The office was a finalist to the 2014 Iakov Chernikhov Prize as a result of its contributions to design culture. 

    We operate through diverse media and platforms and are continuously informed by different kinds of conversations and collaborations. Galán's research has led to the production of several publications and exhibitions including the installation Cinecittá Occupata for the 2014 Venice Biennale by invitation of the general curator Rem Koolhaas. Together with the After Belonging Agency, Galán was the Chief Curator of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale (Graham Foundation Grant 2015). He is also a member of the research project Radical Pedagogies and has co-curated its exhibition at the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale and at the 2014 Venice Biennale, where it was awarded a Special Mention of the jury. He is currently one of the editors of the eponymous volume, forthcoming in 2020 by Sternberg Press (Graham Foundation Grant 2019).

    Additionally, Galán is an architecture historian working on the intersection of architecture, politics, and media, with a particular focus on nationalism, colonialism, and diverse forms of population displacement in the 20th and 21st centuries.

    Galán studied Architecture at ETSAMadrid and TUDelft, he graduated with Distinction from the MArchII program at Harvard GSD, and has a PhD in Architecture History and Theory of Architecture from Princeton. He has been a Fellow at the Spanish Academy in Rome and a Fulbright Scholar. He is Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at Barnard+Columbia Colleges and has taught studios and seminars at Columbia GSAPP and PennDesign among others.

  • Statement Open or Close

    We understand architecture as a key agent participating in the articulation of society. 

    We explore the ways in which architecture contributes to the definition of new ways of being together.

    We are concerned with architecture's relation to cultural transfers, material networks, and diverse forms of population transience in a global context. The relation of these forms of circulation challenge our understanding of architecture (conventionally associated with control, enclosure, permanence, and stability), requires new imaginations for our ways of being together and consequently remains a realm for further inquiry and intervention.

    We are additionally interested in the objects, media technologies, and institutions transforming architecture's individual occupations, its collective operations, and its diverse types of mobilization. 

    These emphases lead the work of the office and continuously challenge our methods of analysis and our design practice.