Rethinking The Future Awards 2020: Second Award, Housing – up to 5 floors (Built), ARV8

ARV8, ÁBATON's cross-laminated timber building in Madrid, won second prize in built housing at the 2020 RTF Awards.

Rethinking The Future is an architecture platform based in India that holds the RTF Awards every year, an international competition with a jury and open entry. In its eighth edition, in 2020, the second award in the category for built housing of up to five floors went to ARV8, ÁBATON’s building on Calle Antonio Rodríguez Villa in Madrid.

ARV8 is, according to the studio, the tallest building in Madrid built with a cross-laminated timber panel structure. Seven storeys of CLT rest on concrete foundations and basements; the façade, of corrugated zinc sheet above a stone plinth, covers continuous insulation that keeps energy demand to a minimum, complemented by aerothermal heating. Inside, a few distinctive homes, some with double-height spaces.

Timber was not chosen to break any record. It was chosen because it allows dry, fast and clean construction in the very centre of the city, because it stores carbon instead of emitting it, and because it leaves inside the homes a warm material that can be seen and touched. The building shows that this way of building is possible between party walls in Madrid.

According to the studio, the same project received the Fuera de Serie award for the best home in 2019.

Source: ARV8’s entry in the 2020 RTF Awards, Runner-Ups section.