Poblado Dirigido de Entrevías

Towards the end of the 1950s, Spain, which was still recuperating from two wars – the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War – was faced with the reconstruction process as well as the planning and implementation of new urban developments. General Franco’s autocratic regime was forced to combine emergency measures to eradicate shantytowns born uncontrollably around cities, together with longterm development and extension plans of the urban fabric.

The ‘Poblados Dirigidos de Renta Limitada’ (settlements directed to limited incomes) were built as satellite nuclei around Madrid between 1956 and 1966, with the aim of providing accommodation for the massive flow of immigrants arriving from rural areas. The seven paradigmatic cases built in the Spanish capital were: Entrevías, Canillas, Fuencarral, Orcasitas, Caño Roto, Manoteras and Almendrales. They are a short-lived but stellar set of solutions to the housing problem based on modern principles of budgetary optimization and constructive rationality combined with urban quality.

As part of these emergency programmes the National Housing Institute, through the Housing Union (Obra Sindical del Hogar), conducted the first of the Poblados Dirigidos, the ‘Entrevías Renovation’, in an area with approximately 4,300 pre-existing shacks. Architects Sáenz de Oiza, Sierra and Alvear drafted an urban renewal plan for the area with three neighbourhood models, which each had different dwelling types: the ‘Poblado de Absorción’ (absorption settlement), the ‘Poblado Dirigido’ (directed settlement) and the ‘Poblado Mínimo’ (minimum settlement). The Poblado Dirigido de Entrevías, located southeast of Madrid on the Vallecas plateau, sits next to the railway junction that links the capital with the south and east of the country. Its location on a gently sloping hillside offered the possibility to create excellent views of the periphery and the city itself. In 1956, illegal squatter housing was suppressed throughout the area and the construction of the houses – also designed by Sáenz de Oiza, Sierra and Alvear – in de first neighbourhood (Poblado Dirigido) was started. The design and construction for the Poblado de Absorción followed the year after and the final stage, the Poblado Mínimo, was finished in 1960. In total around 3,500 units were built, as well as cultural, health care, commercial and religious buildings.

Oiza’s design for the Entrevías Renovation – led by his manifesto of minimum requirements, with a functionalist analysis that determined procedural and project priorities – represented the most radical and rational of all Poblados Dirigidos. In the rectangular pattern of the urban plan, consisting of mainly two-storey row houses with a northeast/ southwest orientation, the influence of American and Dutch models can be clearly perceived. Two alternating types of grid form the streets, squares and public spaces.

The most used unit is a house of 52.8 m2 with a bay width of 3.6 m and 16.2 m deep. An entrance yard separates the dwellings from the street using a whitewashed latticed brick wall, which gives a rural atmosphere with a high level of abstraction. After crossing the courtyard, the house is accessed through the living room where in the back the efficient, transversal one-flight staircase is situated that connects to the upper floor. Behind it, the kitchen opens to a service patio where the only toilet in the house is located. Upstairs, the master bedroom opens to the patio and the two children’s bedrooms face the main façade. The quest for minimum standards is evidenced by the suppression of corridors and closets. But also the low ceiling height of 2.2 m, the slopes of the roofs, the clustering of water points and the strict horizontal band window contributed to an affordable minimum. Nowadays a lot of inhabitants have enlarged the dwellings by constructing several types of extensions in the entrance yard.

Entrevías marked the first successful result of the Poblados Dirigidos and also the definitive impulse for a rational conception of social housing in Spain. After this experience, the Franco regime abandoned all of its social objectives and left housing development to private enterprise, which turned it into a big business.