Offices For Junta Castilla y León, Zamora (Spain) 2012

HORTUS CONCLUSUS. In collaboration with Pablo Fernández Lorenzo, Pablo Redondo Díez, Alfonso González Gaisán and Francisco Blanco Velasco

Rufo House, Toledo (Spain) 2010

The brief was to build a house on a hilltop outside of the city of Toledo. The hill faces southwest and offers interesting views of the distant horizon, reaching the Gredos Mountains to the northeast = Se trata de levantar una casa en lo alto de una loma, a las afueras de Toledo. La loma está orientada a suroeste y tiene unas vistas muy interesantes de horizonte lejano, al noroeste, que alcanzan hasta las montañas de Gredos.

Between Cathedrals, Cádiz (Spain) 2006 - 2009

The project “Between Cathedrals” seeks to create an intervention worthy of the most significant location in the history of Cadiz, the oldest city of the West: the empty space facing the sea located between the Old and New Cathedrals = El proyecto "Entre Catedrales" trata de crear una pieza capaz de poner en valor el lugar más significativo de la historia de Cádiz, la ciudad más antigua de occidente: el espacio vacío entre la Catedral Nueva y la Catedral Vieja, frente al mar.

The Ma: Andalucía´s Museum of Memory, Granada (Spain) 2009

We would like to make “the most beautiful building” for the Museo de la Memoria de Andalucía (Andalusia’s Museum of Memory) in Granada = Querríamos hacer ”el más hermoso edificio” para el Museo de la Memoria de Andalucía en Granada

Moliner House, Zaragoza (Spain) 2003 - 2009

To build a house for a poet. To make a house for dreaming, living and dying. A house in which to read, to write and to think. = Levantar una casa para un poeta. Hacer una casa para soñar, vivir, morir. Para leer, escribir, pensar.

Guerrero House, Vejer de La Frontera, Cádiz (Spain) 2005

GUERRERO HOUSE, VEJER DE LA FRONTERA, CÁDIZ (SPAIN) 2005

SM Offices, Boadilla del Monte, Madrid (Spain) 2003

Like a lying steel giant. Like a train, like a boat. A building with a metal skin on the edge of the highway. = Como un gigante de acero tumbado. Como un tren, como un barco. Un edificio de piel metálica al borde de la carretera.

Offices for Delegation of Public Health, Almería (Spain) 2002

OFFICES FOR DELEGATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH, ALMERÍA (SPAIN) 2002

Centre Bit Raiguer, Inca, Mallorca (Spain) 1998

The project was to build high tech offices on a triangular shaped site within an industrial area. = Se trataba de construir unas oficinas de alta tecnología en un solar de forma triangular en un polígono industrial.

Urban sprawl and city compactness. A proposal for regional sustainability indicators. Case study of the towns of Alcorcon and Majadahonda (Comunidad de Madrid, Spain)

The main contribution of this research paper is to display a range of figures and values which could help urban planners to quantify the urban phenomenon of sprawl. In this way, after a rigorous analysis and comparison between a scattered urban fabric (Majadahonda) and a compact urban fabric (Alcorcón), several possible indexes are established and characterized in order to verify the main hypothesis: in what extent land consumption and exploitation of energy resources are higher in a scattered urban fabric than in a compact one.

Classification of natural flow regimes in the Ebro basin (Spain) by using a wide range of hydrologic parameters

Clasificación de tipos de régimenes naturales de caudales a partir de parámetros de tres componentes del régimen fluvial: magnitud, frecuencia y duración.

Towards downscaling of aerosol gridded dataset for improving solar resource assessment, an application to Spain

Solar radiation estimates with clear sky models require estimations of aerosol data. The low spatial resolution of current aerosol datasets, with their remarkable drift from measured data, poses a problem in solar resource estimation. This paper proposes a new downscaling methodology by combining support vector machines for regression (SVR) and kriging with external drift, with data from the MACC reanalysis datasets and temperature and rainfall measurements from 213 meteorological stations in continental Spain. The SVR technique was proven efficient in aerosol variable modeling. The Linke turbidity factor (TL) and the aerosol optical depth at 550 nm (AOD 550) estimated with SVR generated significantly lower errors in AERONET positions than MACC reanalysis estimates. The TL was estimated with relative mean absolute error (rMAE) of 10.2% (compared with AERONET), against the MACC rMAE of 18.5%. A similar behavior was seen with AOD 550, estimated with rMAE of 8.6% (compared with AERONET), against the MACC rMAE of 65.6%. Kriging using MACC data as an external drift was found useful in generating high resolution maps (0.05° × 0.05°) of both aerosol variables. We created high resolution maps of aerosol variables in continental Spain for the year 2008. The proposed methodology was proven to be a valuable tool to create high resolution maps of aerosol variables (TL and AOD 550). This methodology shows meaningful improvements when compared with estimated available databases and therefore, leads to more accurate solar resource estimations. This methodology could also be applied to the prediction of other atmospheric variables, whose datasets are of low resolution.

Assessing forest response-type diversity to natural disturbances in Peninsular Spain and the Balearic Islands = Evaluación de la diversidad de tipos de respuesta a perturbaciones naturales en la España peninsular e Islas Baleares

Disturbances shape forest ecosystems by influencing their composition, structure, and processes. In the Mediterranean Basin, changes in the disturbance regimes have been predicted to occur in the next future with a higher occurrence of extreme events of drought, wildfire, and – to a lesser extent – windstorm. Woody species are the main elements defining the structure and functioning of forest ecosystems. Recently, response-type diversity has been pointed out as an appropriate indicator of ecosystems resilience. For this, we have elaborated a complete response-trait database for the tree and shrubby species considered in the Third Spanish National Forest Inventory (3SNFI). In the database, the presence or absence of nine response traits associated to drought, fire, and wind were assigned to each species. The database reflected the lack of information about some important traits (in particular for shrubby species) and allowed to determine those traits most widely distributed. The information contained in the database was then used to assess a relative index of forest resilience to these disturbances calculated from the abundance of response traits and the species redundancy for each plot of the 3SNFI; considering both tree and shrubby species. In general, few plots showed high values of the resilience index, probably because some traits were scarcely presented in the species and also because most plots presented very few species. The cartographic representation of the index showed low values for the stands located in mountainous ranges, which are mostly composed by species typical from central Europe. In the other side, Eucalyptus plantations in Galicia appeared as one thee the most resilient ecosystems, due to its higher adaptive capacity to persist after the occurrence of drought, fire, and windstorm events. We conclude that the response traits database can constitute a useful tool for forest management and planning and for future research to enhance the forest resilience.

Spatial and temporal variations of trace element distribution in soils and street dust of an industrial town in NW Spain: 15 years of study

Extensive spatial and temporal surveys, over 15 years, have been conducted in soil in urban parks and street dusts in one of the most polluted cities in western Europe, Avilés (NW Spain). The first survey was carried out in 1996, and since then monitoring has been undertaken every five years. Whilst the sampling site is a relatively small town, industrial activities (mainly the steel industry and Zn and Al metallurgy) and other less significant urban sources, such as traffic, strongly affect the load of heavy metals in the urban aerosol. Elemental tracers have been used to characterise the influence of these sources on the composition of soil and dust. Although PM10 has decreased over these years as a result of environmental measures undertaken in the city, some of the “industrial” elements still remain in concentrations of concern for example, up to 4.6% and 0.5% of Zn in dust and soil, respectively. Spatial trends in metals such as Zn and Cd clearly reflect sources from the processing industries. The concentrations of these elements across Europe have reduced over time, however the most recent results from Avilés revealed an upward trend in concentration for Zn, Cd, Hg and As. A risk assessment of the soil highlighted As as an element of concern since its cancer risk in adults was more than double the value above which regulatory agencies deem it to be unacceptable. If children were considered to be the receptors, then the risk nearly doubles from this element.

Enhanced radon emission in natural CO2 flows in Campo de Calatrava region (central Spain)

Activity of radon gas in natural soils is commonly low (in the order of few thousands of Bq·m-3) due to the fast decay (half-life= 3.8 days in the case of 222Rn) that prevents accumulation in soil pores. Exceptionally, high Rn soil activity (up to 430 KBq·m-3) is found around point sources of deep CO2 fluxes. These fluxes allow the transport of trace gases (including Rn) to long distances in the geosphere leading to a potential hazard as Rn accumulation in buildings. CO2 degassing is common in active or ancient volcanic fields and occurs as free gas fluxes or dissolved in groundwater. In this work, the occurrence of Rnbearing, CO2 fluxes from the Campo de Calatrava region in Central Spain has been studied in order to determine their (1) magnitude, (2) migration paths and (3) potential impact on the environment, and (4) methodologies to best detection and measurement.