FAD Prizes Turn to Madrid

Matadero. Casa del Lector by Antón García-Abril. © Roland Halbe

Catching up on news, the winners of the 2012 FAD Prizes were announced this summer. And though based in Barcelona and traditionally anti-centric, the two most significant awards this year went to projects designed by multiple teams in Madrid.

The Prize for Architecture went to the conversion of the sprawling halls  of Madrid's early 20th century slaughterhouses, the Matadero, into a sprawling cultural center.

Madrid Rio. Bridge by Dominique Perrault. Photo: DC

 And the City and Landscape Prize went to the equally sprawling  Madrid Rio, a 10-kilometer park along the banks of the Manzanares River, passing directly in front of the Matadero. It was designed by a team lead by Ginés Garrido and including the firms Burgos & Garrido, Porras La Casta, Rubio & Álvarez-Sala and West 8, with special interventions by Dominique Perrault (pedestrian bridge over the river) and others.

Like Madrid Rio, the Matadero project has is sponsored by the municipal government, which has conceived the complex as "a creativity support center." And it describes the rehab of the existing pavilions as a "field of experimentation for new architecture" (both quotes from the Matadero web page).

Spaces include:

• Nave 16, dedicated to art and artists' studios, by the architects Alejandro Vírseda, Iñaqui Carnicero and Ignacio Vila Almazán.
• The Casa del Lector or House of the Reader, operated by a private foundation and opening this month, by Antón García-Abril
• The Cineteca by José María Churtichaga and Cayetana de la Quadra Salcedo
•  Plaza Matadero and other outdoor spaces, by Ginés Garrido, Carlos Rubio y Fernando Porras
• Escaravox, plaza shading devices, by Andrés Jaque
• Nave de Múscia by María Langarita and Víctor Navarro
• Entry Pavilion by Arturo Franco
• Design Center by  José Antonio García Roldán
• Naves del Español, run by the national Teatro Español and designed by theater director Mario Gas and stage designers Jean Guy Lecat and Francisco Fontanals, under the coordination of municipal architect Emilio Esteras
• Home of the Ballet Nacional de España and the Compañía Nacional de Danza, rehabbed in the 1990s by Antonio Fernández Alba 

Escaravox shading devices by Andrés Jaque. Image: Andrés Jaque.

Nave de Música by María Langarita & Victor Navarro. Photo © Luis Diaz Diaz

Nave 16. Photo © Roland Halbe

Cineteca by Churtichaga & De la Quadra Salcedo

Nave de Musica, Plaza from Wikipedia by AlesKubr2

The Celestial Sublime

Continuing a regular collaboration with the Viennese magazine architektur.aktuell, in this month's issue I contribute a feature on Dominque Perrault's Olympic Tennis Center in Madrid: The Magic Box, architektur.aktuell, October, 2009, pages 54 - 65.

"When seen from inside the vast open spaces of the stadiums, as their movement gradually exposes the infinite blue of Spain's summer sky, the roofs' opening acquires the solemn ceremony of a primitive religious rite.... Well-framed by the elegant formal clarity of Perrault's design, with its clean structural rhythms and luminous spatiality, this unveiling of the celestial sublime packages the sky-viewing epiphanies of American artist James Turrell for a mass audience."
 
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Photo by DC.