Title

Author(s)

Fernando Moral-Andrés

Affiliation

School of Architecture and Building. Universidad Nebrija

DOI

https://doi.org/10.65686/XLRX3678

Keywords

Ephemeral Heritages, Zapadores-Ciudad del Arte, La Tabacalera

PP

678-685

How to Cite

Moral-Andrés, Fernando. “Critically Ephemeral Heritages? Abandonment, Reactivation, and the Crisis of Peripheral Heritage in Zapadores – Ciudad del Arte and La Tabacalera (Madrid).” In Proceedings of the International Conference on Adaptive Reuse. Volume 1, edited by Andrea Crudeli, Francesca Molle, and Emanuele Carrai, 678–685. Firenze: STH Press, 2026.

Abstract

Architectural heritage can play a significant role in the construction of the contemporary public city. Despite the substantial investments made in heritage and the recurrent implementation of museum programmes, social success has not always been guaranteed. There are, however, more modest approaches which, nonetheless, have effectively managed to revitalise heritage sites in Madrid that lie outside the city’s main axes. Zapadores – Ciudad del Arte, 2018–2024 and La Tabacalera, partially reactivated in 2010 as a self-managed social centre are two such peripheral interventions that reveal a kind of complete temporal cycle – from foundational crisis to, almost, decline. First one was established in the former military barracks of Zapadores in Fuencarral, the latter was located in the old tobacco factory of Embajadores. Zapadores activated a large, unlisted military complex as a centre for artistic creation. The barracks have been shut down, due to tensions arising from the urban development of Madrid Nuevo Norte. La Tabacalera project involved reviving a listed industrial building, through consensus with the local authorities, by residents of the neighbourhood, in order to meet real needs of the surrounding district. Today, the Embajadores factory faces an uncertain future regarding the spaces dedicated to community activities – spaces that made a considerable contribution during times of crisis and which now risk being curtailed by a new ministerial initiative. Both projects, driven, by different actors, in critical contexts, took advantage of the pre-existing architectural conditions to introduce new functions rooted in specific social needs. An inert heritage thus became a living, open, and participatory one. Both cases may have been born under the shadow of inevitable obsolescence, pending the return of traditional dynamics. Yet both also offer functional, paradigmatic alternatives within conflicting urban frameworks. Both are realities that propose new ways of understanding and creating the public city, through a redefinition of heritage.

Edited by
Andrea Crudeli
Francesca Molle
Emanuele Carrai

Publisher
STH Press, Firenze

ISBN Paperback – 9791281661141
ISBN Ebook – 9791281661158
DOI – https://doi.org/10.65686/SISY7263

Year
2026

Proceedings of
International Conference on Adaptive Reuse
hosted by The University of Pisa, Italy
15-19 September 2025, at the Gispoteca di Arte Antica dell’Università di Pisa.