Few protected historic structures have been treated with less respect than Madrid’s Central Eléctrica de Mediodía in its transformation into the CaixaForum cultural center. But given the limited architectural value of the power plant, built in 1900, and the brilliant irreverence of the intervention, this is a deed that can only be celebrated. In what they describe as a surgical operation, Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron demolished the original roof and interiors. They cut away the granite base of the brick exterior walls, creating the illusion that the building floats in midair, hovering over a covered entry plaza. With the addition of two upper stories clad in rusted cast iron and two underground levels, they doubled the building’s height and increased its size five times to more than 100,000 square feet. In short, the architects have skinned and gutted the structure like an animal, transforming its tattered brick shell, four withes thick, into an exotic, pelt-like veneer. This metamorphosis has been carefully pulled off, but it is also smart, mischievous, and energizing fun.
CaixaForum Madrid is owned and operated by the Social Works Foundation of La Caixa, Spain’s largest savings bank, and is dedicated to programs in art, music, theater, and literature. The generating station occupying the site the foundation chose had won limited protection for its role in the early electrification of Madrid, but the local Heritage Commission approved its partial demolition based on the project’s merits and public benefits. Located amid narrow streets not far from the Prado Museum, the building was cut off from the nearby avenue of the Paseo del Prado by a gas station that Herzog and de Meuron convinced the client to buy and demolish. This acquisition allowed them to enlarge the entry plaza and establish a connection to the Paseo, Madrid’s Museum Mile, which is soon to be refurbished by Alvaro Siza. The CaixaForum joins Paseo cultural institutions such as Rafael Moneo’s 1992 Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and his recent expansion of the Prado [record, March 2008, page 118]. Also nearby is Jean Nouvel’s Reina Sofía Museum addition [RECORD, July 2006, page 84].
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