Liminality and communitas. The blurring of urban order in the Neigbourhood Unit of El Taray

Abstract

The Neighbourhood Unit of El Taray (Segovia, 1962-1964) was commissioned by the Cooperative Pius XII for an sloped site on the north-east edge of the citadel of Segovia. Given its fragmented layout around collective spaces as well as the way it makes use of aerial connections and galleries, the complex has been typically linked with the British Neobrutalism and the experiences of Team 10. However, beyond its adherence to a certain movement, we can state that El Taray is the consequence of a pressing need for adaptation to topography, to functional requirements and to material scarcity. These conditions will challenge the creativity of the young Aracil motivating him to devise a good number of advanced design solutions that sixty years later still prove their freshness and relevance. Notable among these is its socio-spatial scheme, an intricate network of significances and circulations that blurs the housing complex between the exterior and the interior, the distant and the close or the collective and the individual. This paper seeks to overcome the traditional reading of El Taray —from the idea of typology or the assimilation to contemporary architectural movements— to present a critical update that emphasizes its liminal condition as key for its social, material and urban sustainability. To this end, El Taray is linked to the present by being analysed from the notion of habitable system that spreads its influence to the community that lives in it and to the context in which it is inserted.