Office for Strategic Spaces (OSS)

OSS is an office of art and architecture based in Madrid joined by an international network of collaborators from various disciplines sharing the same interest in contemporary urban space and its economic, social and cultural consequences. For their architectural work, OSS get public recognition after winning the first prize at the International Competition of ideas for the design of the building of the Civil Registry in the Campus of Justice in Madrid.
Currently the major OSS project is Ensanche! / Pump Up Housing!. This project proposes innovative solutions for the rehabilitation of housing blocks of the postwar era and of the first developmentalisms as well as their public spaces by using a software application capable of generating a customized catalog of optimal solutions with minimal costs for design and construction. Universities in Spain, Europe and Asia have invited Angel Borrego Cubero to lead workshops in which the method would be applied to local cases. In 2012 this project was a finalist in the “Research” category of the Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (BIAU) Spain and selected in the “Share It” section of the Festival Bottom Up of Eme3.
The working methods of OSS cross disciplines and references in the search for innovative solutions, and this is what explains the diverse nature of their projects. Thus, OSS designs installations for public space, among these, for the ARCO Art Fair 2003 and 2004, el Matadero Madrid, the Artium Museum in Vitoria, the Z1-Rüdersdorf Museumspark in Berlin or at the Biennial of Spanish Architecture in Madrid, conducts research projects, such as Mutant Bridges, Pump Up Housing!, or the documentary film The Competition about architectural competitions; designs projects for exhibition spaces, such as to the Reina Sofia Museum (Arte e Imagen en Movimiento), Casa Asia (Filipiniana), San Jose Biennial ZER01, California, USA (01SJ), LABoral Gijón (FeedForward), Jesus de Pozo (Monograph collection); designs unifamiliar houses and social housing (House Abad, House Borrego-Duerr, House Murakami, Mixed Use Zaragoza, Housing Orcasitas, Housing Carabanchel etc), consults on planning strategies (Solar Decathlon Madrid, AZCA, post-tsunami housing in Tohoku, Japan) etc.
OSS’s activity has been reflected in national media as TVE1, TVE 2, El Pais, ABC, El Mundo, as well as in specialized national and international journals: Volume, MAS Context, Arquitectura Viva, Pasajes de arquitectura, Future, A10, Spéciale´Z Journal etc. Soon, the book Ensanche! / Pump Up Housing! will be published.