Edificio Mirador: A Vertical Neighborhood

Edificio Mirador, or the ”Lookout Building”, is located in Madrid, Spain, and is designed to be a mini neighborhood in the form of a single unit. It is located in Sancinarro, a large and new residential area of Madrid where the housing blocks are generally six or eight stories high. Therefore, with its design, Edificio Mirador stands as a counterpoint to the uniformity of the surrounding housing blocks. The building is about 64 meters tall and there are 21 stories in total. It was designed by MVRDV, a Dutch architecture and urban design practice, and completed in 2005.

It consists of nine ”neighborhoods” or housing units. Each unit has different facade colors and materials like stone slabs, cement, and mosaic tiles. Even the window patterns differ from each other. Each of the units has its own character and their design makes it easy to see the individual block from the outside.

The central ”lookout” part of the vertical neighborhood also provides outdoor space and a community garden for the inhabitants of the building by monumentalizing space and public life. It is 40 meters above the ground and frames the distant Guadarrama Mountains.