THE CLOSET STRATAGEM

- Recycling unused empty lots.
- Available legal options.
- Versatile occupation structure.
- Temporary locations per year.
- Mockery of the cardboard patrimony.
- Impermanent urban infiltration.
- Systematic shaking of the legislation.

The subsequent occupations of empty lots with the closet strategy came into being, in a personal manner, from my living experience in the Puzzle-House, situated for one month in the Plaza de la Mina of Cadiz.

A attitude to situated at the very limits of the legal, an intellectual embezzlement, which emancipates itself from what urban planning proposes as the patrimony of the stone cardboard or from what the old city is beginning to look like, that is, an inhabitable amusement park.

Using the Puzzle-House as the prototype, in its various possible configurations, the idea is to start occupying different empty lots of the old city for a maximum of two years per lot, thus achieving a nomadic, disperse, and impermanent way of living an urban plot that tends towards temporal mummification.

Nothing prevents us from privately contracting the use of an area from the owner of an empty lot who still owns and holds every right over the empty lot. This contract will not be subject to the special regime of country or urban payments, but it will be automatically terminated through an order of the City Hall that calls for the demolition or move in order to carry out urbanization projects (art. 136.2 RDL 1/1992, of June 20). This is not the case for the lots chosen.

The 3rd Section of the 4th Chapter of the 3rd Title of the PGOU of Seville oversees the task of Specific Conservation and Temporal Occupation of Empty Lots. Placing a pre-fabricated structure in the lot could be legitimated through art. 3.10.1.c "spreading with provisional and dismountable structures," through which we would request the license to stay in the empty lot. We will have to respect the conditions described in sections 2 and 3 of art. 3.39-this poses no problems at all for us or for the goals we have in mind. It must be stressed that the said authorization will have to be accepted by the owner and be indicated in the ownership title.

But what would happen if we set up such a structure with no authorization at all from the city authorities? Are we really within the above mention art. 3.10.1.c? Articles 334 to 337 of the Civil Code tell us what we must consider movable and unmovable goods. Our structure is an object that can be easily "transported from one place to another with no effects on the immovable thing to which it is connected" (art. 335 of the Civil Code); our structure does not fall under the jurisdiction of the previous article of the same legal text because it is not connected to the lot "in a fixed manner, thus preventing it from being removed from the lot without breaking or damaging the good" (art. 334.3 of the Civil Code); and, finally, the structure is not joined to the place in a permanent manner with the end of becoming part of it. As a result of the above, we conclude that we are clearly speaking about a movable good.

Consequently, the sequential placing in the different empty lots selected does not fall under any normative restriction obliging us to solicit permission, especially since spreading is not our goal. The action could be compared to the storing of any other movable object which respects the preservation conditions of the empty lot, which are regulated by the 3rd Section of the 4th Chapter of the 3rd Title of the PGOU. Similarly, neither the rules about health nor about security pose an obstacle, as one can easily verify by consulting the technical information manuals of the materials we plan to use.

Juridical advisor: IGNACIO PRETEL RINCÓN

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EXECUTION UNIT

Architect without a developer builds non-architecture while occupying a private plot of land located at 9 Barco street, to begin an example of how to temporarily occupy unused land by renting from the owner. This strategy guarantees its use for an agreed minimum period of 4 months, extendable to a maximum of a year, for the installation of the collapsible house-studio.  An agreement to obtain an electrical connection from an individual close to the land being used, and some portable chemically-operated toilets that would work by collecting rainwater (that ended up not being installed, due to the lack of financial resources), would help make this urban residence more habitable. This structure housed cultural debate, political and tenants' meetings, and of course many drinking parties and urban barbecues well-attended by friends, acquaintances, and the beautiful and active Paulita. It is made of 200 meters of 2.5 mm-wide rubber-encased electric cable which ran from Joaquín Costa street, turned down Barco street and arrived at the plot located at number 9 of the same street, ending in the electric control box and surge protector that provided service to the furniture-house, which was submitted, fraudulently, to the National Architecture Competition FAD by architect ex-friends (see appendix, "Law suits, petitions, and denunciations").

Subject > Architect without a developer

Collaborators > owner of the plot of land, Sebastian De Alba and his team, Paula

Materials > steel structure, aluminum-polythene coatings, scaffolding material, aluminum frames, closets made of galvanized steel sheets, recycled public fencing

Definition > Rootless collapsible house

Surface area > first floor 12 m2 and a bridge of 1,8 m2, second floor 7,2 m2, plot 25,2 m2