OSS is an architecture and art practice based in Madrid, founded in 1999 by PhD. Architect Ángel Borrego Cubero and joined by an international network of collaborators from various disciplines sharing the same interest in contemporary urban space and its economic, social and cultural consequences. For their architectural work, OSS start to be known after winning the 1st Prize at the International
Competition for the Design of the Civil Registry in the Campus of Justice in Madrid (2007). Creative Industries Incubator, recognized as the Best Rehabilitation Project at NAN Architecture and Building Awards 2016 (Spain, 2016), awarded a COAM Prize with a Special Mention (Madrid, 2015, Architects Association from Madrid), and a Prize to the Most Innovative Workplace Project at Build Sustainability Awards (UK; 2016); it also won a 3rd Prize at the RTF Sustainability Awards (India, 2016), it was selected among the 20 finalists at the XIII Spanish Biennial of Architecture (Spain, 2016) and nominated at the EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture Mies van der Rohe’14. Factoría Cultural was also selected for exhibition within Unfinished, the Spanish Pavilion awarded with a Golden Lion at the 15 Biennale di Venezia. OSS is responsible for developing a long-term research titled Ensanche / Pump Up Housing. Rehabilitation strategies for collective housing neighborhoods. This project was a finalist in the Research section of the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (Spain 2012) and at the International Festival of Architecture eme3 – Bottom Up (Spain, 2012). Together with X-Clinic, Natalie Jeremijenko’s laboratory, OSS designed Urban Space Station, an advanced greenhouse that can alter urban buildings to produce food and oxygen enriched air while filtering human waste and carbon dioxide. Its objective is to enhance life quality (air, water, temperature, food, waste, social cohesion) in cities and in outer space mission by complementing human existence with fauna and flora. The USS has involved some 10 years of development. A first prototype at 40% scale, was built at the National Museum of Art Reina Sofía within the exhibition “Souls&Machines. Digital Art & New Media” ( Madrid, 2008) and is now part of the Museo de Arte Útil collection. In 2016, a new version, called USS-xSR21 was built in the Emscherkunst Triennial docking into the Swan Complex, near Dortmund, Germany, to overlook the new Lake Phoenix, a former steelworks site. OSS produced the documentary film The Competition, winner of an Architecture Dissemination Award at the XIII Spanish Biennial of Architecture and of a 1st Prize at the COAM Awards (Architects Association from Madrid, 2014). The movie was selected in the official sections of not few festivals such as the Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA Montréal’15), Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF’15), DocumentaMadrid’14, International Festival of Art Film Schermo dell’Arte Firenze’14 etc. and it opened several festivals such as the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR’13) and the Copenhagen Architecture x Film Festival (CAFF’14) etc. The working methods of OSS cross disciplines and references in the search for innovative solutions, and this is what explains the diverse nature of their projects. Thus, OSS conducts research projects, such as Mutant Bridges, Pump Up Housing!, or the documentary film The Competition about architectural competitions; designs projects for exhibition spaces, such as to the MUSAC León (Colónia Apócrifa), the Reina Sofia Museum (Arte e Imagen en Movimiento), Casa Asia (Filipiniana), San Jose Biennial ZER01, California, USA (01SJ), LABoral Gijón (FeedForward), Jesus de Pozo (Monograph collection); designs unifamiliar houses and social housing (House Abad, House Borrego-Duerr, House Murakami, Mixed Use Zaragoza, Housing Orcasitas, Housing Carabanchel etc), consults on planning strategies (Solar Decathlon Madrid, AZCA, post-tsunami housing in Tohoku, Japan), designs installations for public space, among these, for the ARCO Art Fair 2003 and 2004, el Matadero Madrid, the Artium Museum in Vitoria, the Z1-Rüdersdorf Museumspark in Berlin or at the Biennial of Spanish Architecture in Madrid. OSS’s activity has been reviewed in general media such as The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, El Mundo, TVE1, TVE 2, El Pais, as well as in architecture and design national and international journals.
