Fuera de Serie Design and Innovation Awards 2019: Winner, Housing, ARV8

The jury of the Fuera de Serie Design and Innovation Awards 2019 chose ARV8, ÁBATON's timber building in Madrid, as the winner in Housing.

On 25 November 2019, Fuera de Serie, the lifestyle magazine of the newspaper Expansión, informed ÁBATON that the jury of the third edition of its Fuera de Serie Design and Innovation Awards had chosen ARV8 as the winner in the Housing category. The awards were presented on 16 December 2019 in Barcelona.

The jury was made up of the designer Mario Ruiz, the architect Miguel de Oriol e Icaza, the furniture expert Mónica Piera, the businessman Luis Sans, owner of the Santa Eulalia store, the luxury sector expert María Eugenia Girón and the journalist Txema Ybarra.

ARV8 is a seven-storey building with four homes on Calle Antonio Rodríguez Villa, in central Madrid, completed in 2018 and, according to the studio, the tallest in the city built with a cross-laminated timber panel structure. The timber rests on concrete basements and is wrapped in a corrugated zinc façade above a stone plinth, with continuous insulation that reduces energy demand. Inside, the four homes, some with double-height spaces, leave the timber exposed.

The project’s innovation lies not in its form but in its construction system: dry, fast and clean construction on a plot between party walls, with a material that stores carbon and gives the homes warmth and good thermal performance.

In 2020 the building also won second prize at the RTF Awards in the built housing category.

Source: letter from Ivan Martínez-Cubells, director of Fuera de Serie (Expansión / El Mundo), to the studio, 25 November 2019.