Madrid’s 1899 electrical power station has opened as CaixaForum Madrid, after a $96 million restoration that transforms it into an art gallery, concert hall, film and conference venue. The long-awaited cultural center began life with a big bang, showing 45 works from an exhibit from Florence’s Uffizi gallery, many of which had never before left Italy.
The Uffizi show is only a sampling of the exhibits expected to draw return crowds to the new venue, and was quickly followed by one on the works of graphic artist Alphonse Mucha, and an exhibit of photography featuring Charlie Chaplin. Most exhibits are free.
Historic Industrial Architecture
The building itself is a work of art, designed by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, turning a rare example of early 20th-century industrial architecture (few of these survive in the city) in Madrid’s historical center into a modern complex that quintuples its size, while preserving its integrity.
The cast-iron and brick Central Eléctrica del Mediodía has been transformed into an innovative “sculptural” building over a new public square, by literally lifting it off the ground. Polished metal and shifting planes of its entrance stairs takes visitors upwards from the open area underneath the building, which seems to hover overhead like a giant space craft, defying the laws of gravity. This open area underneath the building solved the visual problem of having so large a building appearing crowded in this close urban setting, surrounded by narrow streets.
The illusion of space in this crowded neighborhood was created by removing a gas station that had sat between the building and the wide Paseo del Prado, and turning the cleared space into a small open plaza. This opened the façade of the CaixaForum to view, but left a solid brick wall that had – before the gas station – been hidden by a taller building long since torn down.
Hanging Garden
To cover this blank wall and frame the CaixaForum, a 75-foot-high vertical garden was designed, working with botanist Patrick Blanc. The entire 5,000-square-foot wall is covered in 15,000 plants, of 250 different species, whose foliage combines to look, at first glance, like a giant hedge. But the effect is far from a solid green wall, with sweeping patterns of varying shades of green, highlighted by flowering plants.
The effect is as stunning as the façade of the restored building itself. Moreover, this vertical garden ties the CaixaForum visually to both the Botanical Garden across the Paseo del Prado, but to the tree-lined promenade that runs along the center of this boulevard.
Between the hanging garden, the restored brick facade, the illusion of its floating above the square unsupported, and the several more floors sheathed in what appears to be rusted iron added above the original building, the effect is sculptural and contemporary, but not at all out of place. And it adds a new chapter to the continuing growth of Madrid’s “Mile of Art.”
