Carlos de Riaño, rehabilitación del Cuartel de las Reales Guardias del Corps, Madrid

The recent intervention on the old Conde Duque Barracks, in Madrid, has revealed a history of successive layers that distorted the original building's openings. The work carried out on the old barracks by Carlos de Riaño's studio has tried to recover the old prominence of these openings. With this objective in mind, a new hybrid window system was developed, conceived ad hoc to achieve new features with respect to the conventional carpentry systems, which were not entirely adequate: the wooden ones because they acquired excessive section and required maintenance on the outside; the aluminum ones, because they did not fit in a historic building.

A mixed solution was chosen: sand-blasted stainless steel on the exterior and oiled iroko wood on the interior. A folded sheet steel frame denotes the opening. Behind it is a hinged wooden frame, against which a steel profile is screwed on the outside to act as a frame for the glazing. The view to the outside is thus mostly metallic, with a wooden edge, and to the inside the wooden frame and leaf can be seen in its entire section, embedded in the flared fittings of the openings. The solution won the 2012 Veteco-Asfave Award.