Identification	ZAYAS. Restoration of 16th Century Moorish House for 8 apartments.
Situation	S. GREGORIO 13. GRANADA.
Project day	2004
Work to date
Architects	MARISOL GARCÍA TORRENTE. UBALDO GARCÍA TORRENTE
Partners	ISABEL MOTA PERNÍAS
Quantity Surveyors	ANTONIO LOZANO
Others Partners	Photography: FERNANDO ALDA
Promoter	FUNDACIÓN ZAYAS
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Any action in the city, also the architectural, inevitably has two dimensions: the public and private. It will be more or less public or private depending on the degree of woven permeability of the same. A simple stroll in the low Albayzín can guess that this relationship is not the same as that could be in previous centuries (also variable). Occurs equally in nearby cities such as Malaga or Seville, where the habits of past life have been largely lost within the historic site, now populated almost entirely by social and cultural classes quite distinct. The population that keeps alive this way of life are moving to the suburbs and slums, and they are changing their habits because of the influence of the spaces they now live. In this regard, and though it naturally develops a certain way of life, which is none other than "the soul of the city," today, part of his heritage, other layers are superimposed and they enrich the whole population . A living heritage, different from the other heritages which is preserved in craft museums and textbooks, which manifests themselves continuously with its own laws, not always kind or assumed by the administration and, of course unpredictable. So the idea is laudable to maintain or regain a disinherited people, while improving living conditions. The city, as a living entity has other laws, closer to the idea of movement, the sense of the fleeting, the transformation of the transitory, of the unexpected. Nothing is more futile than trying to catch an agent in a continual state of transformation. Only when the planning requirements, including conservatives ones theoretically have been the protagonists in the shaping of the city, It gets that the way of how to inhabit it, aren't desirable for anyone, except, of course, for capital, which finds that base itself a breeding ground for speculation. Standards we are doomed to meet, but also forced to fight. The assumption of the modern movement rules with respect to the conformation of the dwelling-house and the rescue of the city according to the codes Tendenza action, worsen the state of the issue. At the end, the government has consolidated a number of laws which are applied without reflection and without evaluative criteria, much more destructive than those undertaken in a "natural" way by users. Just a visit to the neighborhood, the building project object and its inhabitants to understand the mechanisms of action to be taken in the intervention, must move away from approaches as antagonistic as those discussed above: first attempt to recover the past, in the image of noble and solemn appearance must have a house like this at Albayzín , and another embedding a building type designed from the perspective of the laws specific to the block of flats on the periphery. Examples of both forms of intervention can be seen with a whole array of variants. We propose to start with new arguments that do not want to be generalized, but a line of research in a particular place based on flexibility and adaptability to circumstances, without preventing changes can continue to give in the future. Do not forget that the life of a building is much more extensive in time than its residents. Current residents will be replaced by others whose life and circumstances will be very different: the idea of comfort, furniture, coverings, appearance, consumer objects, identifying objects or ornaments, fragmentation or specialization space functionality, the appropriate way of the ordinary, light, texture, color, etc. They also will need answers from this project. Improved living conditions and sanitation of the building play an equally important role when designing, but there must be a balance which should not be overlooked. On the one hand the "recovery" of a series of spaces and shapes that are no longer private property to be part of collective memory or cultural wealth of the city (not to mention that the recovery of historic centers represent the short and medium term development of a tourism industry that is clearly a source of energy for the community). On the other hand, We must protect the lifestyle of its inhabitants-permanent or sporadic- who fight mightily for not to leave their neighborhood. The proposal is essentially the recovery of the basic building structure and space of the building through its definition levels by coupling the living spaces from it, according to their relative position and allowing the development of the whole arc of possibilities it brings.