The former Ciempozuelos School of Nursing inspires Madrid's future architects

Madrid’s cultural and urban life adds a new chapter with its focus on Ciempozuelos. There, the former Nursing School, closed for decades and still without Bien de Interés Cultural protection, becomes the centre of an academic project that could shape the future of local heritage. Architecture students from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid have chosen this building to develop rehabilitation proposals, bringing together the history and potential of a space that many local residents remember but few have set foot in in recent years.

The building, located on Paseo de la Estación, will be the focus of the course ‘Criteria for intervention in architectural heritage’, in which five departments of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura take part. It is not the first time this group of teachers and students has faced similar challenges: in previous courses they have worked on the old Tabacalera, Plaza Mayor or the Convento de San Bernardino, always with the aim of connecting theory with the region’s urban reality.

The decision to focus on Ciempozuelos was agreed by the eleven teachers involved, who valued the building’s uniqueness for its history, its French-inspired design and its location in the very heart of the municipality. Before starting to draw plans, the students toured the inside of the property, accompanied by local historian Daniel Carvajal, to understand first-hand the structure and state of preservation of a place that has spent years awaiting a second life.

From the Town Hall, Mayor Raquel Jimeno regrets that neither the Ministerio de Cultura nor the Comunidad de Madrid have included the building on the list of Bienes de Interés Cultural or allocated funds for its recovery. Even so, both the Consistorio and the Complejo Asistencial San Juan de Dios have provided the UPM with all available historical documentation, from original plans to old photographs, so that students can work from a solid and realistic basis.

The former Nursing School, inaugurated in 1910 and signed by Ignacio de Aldama Elorz —a leading figure in Madrid architecture in the first third of the 20th century—, stands out for its French-inspired façade and eclecticism, a mixture of styles that reflects the city’s evolution and its needs. The challenge now is to imagine how to restore its place in everyday life in Ciempozuelos and perhaps inspire new ways of caring for heritage in the Comunidad de Madrid.

The former Nursing School building is one of those corners that, although far from central Madrid, form part of the region’s urban story. Its architecture, marked by a mixture of styles and functionality, belongs to a period when Madrid’s outskirts were beginning to define their own identity. Today, its future depends as much on the creativity of young architects as on the city’s ability to integrate its past into tomorrow’s plans.