Arquitectura #388

Clima
Javier García-Germán and Alejandro Valdivieso

Although there are still some skeptics, climate change is an incontestable reality. Perhaps it is only a question of poorly informed citizens, because climate change is unanimously supported by the scientific community and, according to recent surveys, most of civil society is in favor of taking strong measures.  

In the case of Madrid climate change is not something abstract and distant, but rather the opposite. The Mediterranean basin and in particular the Iberian Peninsula will be especially affected, as Spain is the only country in the EU that has almost the half of its territory below parallel 40°, taking the climate of North Africa. According to scientific studies in progress, the increase in average temperature will be 3.5°C in summer and 7°C in winter, which corresponds to the displacement of about 1.000 km from Madrid to the South. In this way, it is expected that our city will have the climate of Marrakech, which offers interesting opportunities in the winter months, but also great challenges during the summer. 

This situation hits a real estate industry entrenched in building procedures that are far removed from any path close to decarbonization. This situation forces agents not only to rethink how buildings are designed, built, air-conditioned, occupied and maintained, but also to reconsider the way in which cities, today spread across the territory and dependent on still cheap fossil fuels, are developed. The last issue, focused on territory (387), proposed rethinking the city from an ecological perspective, focusing on decarbonizing construction processes and redirecting them from extractive practices towards a circular metabolism. This issue on climate complements the previous one, reflecting climate change and the challenge of adapting cities and buildings to this new situation.  

With the Contributions of
Ana Amado (Guest Photographer), Silvia Benedito & Eduardo Prieto (Co-editors alongside the Directors), Iñaki Ábalos, Manuel Almestar, Bartlebooth (Antonio Giráldez + Pablo Ibáñez), Silvia Benedito, Rafael B. Durán, BIZNA estudio (Rocío García + Pedro Torres), Manuel Bouzas, Toni Cañellas, Salmaan Craig, Javier De Andrés Ensamble Studio (Débora Mesa + Antón García-Abril), Héctor Fernández Elorza, Jeannette Kuo, rita-Navarro (María Langarita y Víctor Navarro), Javier Martínez, Nieves Mestre, Silvia Muñoz, Lucas Muñoz, Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza, TAAs – Totem arquitectos asociados (Alia García Germán y Javier García-Germán).