We are an architecture and art production office based in Madrid, founded in 1999 by Ángel Borrego Cubero. We combine professional services and projects with research work, all of which show our more or less explicit activism for wider democracy and data informed participation, a more inclusive urban planning and socially responsible real estate market, and for a critical and more architecturally driven balance between building, energy and sustainability needs.
We completed Factoría Cultural Matadero Madrid, a reversible architecture project that reuses an existing former industrial space for a creative industries production centre. For this project we won the COAM Award with Special Mention 2015 given by the Madrid Chamber of Architects, the NAN Award to the Best Rehabilitation Project 2016 and the Third Prize at Rethinking The Future Sustainability Awards 2016 Workspace category. The project was selected among the 20 finalists at the XIII Spanish Biennial of Architecture 2016 as well as among the 15 finalists at the European Award for Architectural Heritage Intervention and it was a nominee at the European Prize of Contemporary Architecture Mies van der Rohe 2014. It was also part of the Spanish Pavilion, the Golden Lion winner at the XV Biennale di Venezia 2016.
At public architecture competitions, we won the first prize at the Design Contest for the Civil Registry of Madrid (2007), an international competition where architects such as Foster, Rogers, Zaera’s FOA and Zaha Hadid also won competitions for other buildings of the Campus of Justice. We also won the second prize in the Competition for the Design of a Housing and Offices Tower in Zaragoza (2007) and the fourth prize in the Competition for the Mahou Museum and Flagship Space in Madrid (2015).
Our participation in competitions has produced a research project on competitions and their relationship to architectural practice, participation and democracy. This ongoing research, granted with funds from the Foundation Arte y Derecho VEGAP, the Government of Andorra, Creative Industries NL Funds, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, etc., has produced so far The Competition, the first feature documentary ever to show the entire process of an architectural competition from the inside. The film has been met with global success, and we are in the process of enlarging the scope of the research. On October 10th 2013, The Competition opened the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR) in front of a 500 people audience. The film has been successfully shown since then in cities, universities, architecture and cultural centres across Europe, Australia, United States of America, Latin America and Africa and it was an Official Selection film for important film festivals. The Competition won the Architecture Dissemination Award at the XIII Spanish Biennial of Architecture, in 2016 and it was the first ever non-building project to win the First Prize at the COAM Architecture Awards given by the Madrid Chamber of Architects in 2014.
In collaboration with Natalie Jeremijenko’s X-Clinic and New York University, we designed the prototype Urban Space Station, an advanced greenhouse able to alter the urban buildings in order to enhance quality of life. A 40% of this prototype was built and tested within the exhibition “Souls & Machines, Digital Art & New Media”, held in 2008, at the National Art Museum Reina Sofía in Madrid. In 2016, a 1:1 prototype was built for the Art Triennial Emscherkunst. Placed on top of an existent building, docked onto the air conditioning of the surrounding buildings, it created a cleaning circulation; the building’s waste air and warmth were filtered by the USSs plants, cleaned, and enriched with oxygen before it was led back into the building.
At OSS, we also lead the long-term research ¡Ensanche! / Pump Up Housing!, a massive housing rehabilitation program based on our own decision support software. Initially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Housing and the Government of the Canaries Island, it has had other collaborations with universities and local administration. In 2012, this on-going project was a finalist at the Research Prize of the Ibero-American Architecture Biennial, a finalist at the International Festival of Architecture eme3 Bottom-up and was included in the AlterArchitectures Manifesto of the Observatory of Innovative Architectural and Urban Processes in Europe.
We led the research Mutant Bridges, a study on the mono functionality of the public works and their possible occupation. Together with Haruki Sato and Jorge Almazán from Keio University, Ángel Borrego Cubero, our founder, developed Satoyama Hills, a research that proposes sustainable solutions for housing and facilities in the tsunami-affected areas off the coast of Japan.
We designed the Master Plan for Solar Decathlon Madrid 2010 and the Master Plan for “Out of the Garage, Into the World”, part of the 01 San José Biennial 2010, US. We designed the layout for exhibitions at the MUSAC in León, at the LABoral Gijón, at Centro Cultural Conde Duque or at the National Museum Reina Sofia and at CentroCentro Cibeles in Madrid. We made site specific installations that worked as chill out spaces too for the Contemporary Art Fair ARCO 2003 and ARCO 2004. We completed houses such as the Beach House Abad.
OSS’ s works were reviewed in most important newspapers and architecture magazines across the world: The Guardian (UK), Icon (UK), Volkskrant (NL), Clarín (AR), El País (ES), Arquitectura Viva (ES), On Diseño (ES), Architectural Record (US), Metropolis Magazine (US), AIT (DE), Bauwelt (DE), AMC (FR), C3 (KR), Domus (IT) etc.
HEAD:
PUBLIC CLIENTS:
ARCO Feria Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Madrid – IFEMA / Casa Asia / CentroCentro – Madrid Destino/ Comunidad de Madrid / Factoria Cultural / Greenpeace España / LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial / MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León / Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
COLLABORATIONS:
Abalos & Herreros / Jorge Almazán / Carolina Azcona / Sony Devabhaktuni / Montserrat Farrés Catalá (mmj arquitectes)/ Angel Jaramillo / Natalie Jeremijenko / Jana Leo / Simon Lund / Estanislao Perez Pita / Haruki Sato / Chris Sugrue
PROJECT TEAM :
Ana Isabel Alonso / María Buey / Lara Caballero Salayero / Ursula Campana / Diego Colón / Vanessa Döning / Cristina Entero Arranz / Jon Espinosa / Pablo Fernández Cueto / Marta François Gazquez / Fran Gallardo / Marta García / Loreto García Sánchez / Noemí Gómez Lobo / Martín González / Giuliana di Gregorio / César Harada / Cristina Hortigüela / Elena Larriba / Elena Lozano Brackelmanns / María López Ferrero / Timothée Kazmierczak / Sofía Marín / Diego Martín Sánchez / Paula Martínez / Eduardo Martínez – Mediero Rubio/ Juan Mateos / Pietro Pezzani / Bárbara Palacios Orozco / María Ángeles Peñalver Izaguirre/ Alba R. Illanes / Patricia Ramos / Beatriz Riber López / Pablo Rodríguez Parada / Sara Santos Casilllas / Eva Seijas / Inés Sell / Gäel Urzáiz / Natalia Vera Vigaray / Sara Verd / Yao Zhihua
CONSULTANTS:
Xavier Aguiló i Aran (Structure, BAC) / Carlos Alvárez (Research, Fundación Innaxis) /Xavier Aumedes (Quantity Surveyor, Arrevolt)/ Petra Blaisse (Landscape, Inside Outside) / Ena Cardenal de la Nuez (Graphic Design) / Ignacio Fernández Solla (Sustainability, Ove Arup) / María Fernández Sabau (Cultural Management, Lord Culture) / Fernando García Colorado (Sustainability, Ove Arup) / Alex Ivancic (Sustainability, Aiguasol) / Ignacio Madurga (Sustainability) / Ricardo Muñoz (Installations, BG Ingénieurs) / Simon Lund (Film & Vídeo) / Feike Reitsma (Inflatable structures, IASO) / Jaime Saló (Inflatable structures, IASO) / Cristina Thió (Historical study, Chroma)
