SKETCHING IN MADRID
DEC 2023 - JAN 2024
ALAN WATTS
Visit to Studio Noju’s renovated apartment in Torres Blancas, a classic Brutalist residential complex and apartment building constructed in the 1960’s in Madrid. Meant to be one of several towers, each a small community within itself, the ground floor featured spaces for commercial use and community-oriented shared spaces. This innovative design is meant to reflect the form of a tree, providing a piece of nature in the middle of a dense, urban space in central Madrid.
The renovated apartment features a design that both gives the space a warm, dynamic, and updated contemporary feel while still staying true to the founding design narrative of the overall structure. The apartment continues to celebrate the curves within its space reflecting the curved terraces on the tower making up each apartment; the project itself additionally marks the importance of adaptive reuse and its role in Madrid.
Day trip to Toledo, an ancient city outside of Madrid. The city itself is especially impressive in the way it is centralized on the crest of a hill--in this way creating an effective ancient defense system to protect the city’s inhabitants when first established. The city is known also for the way in which its urban fabric is walled into one clearly defined space. The architecture of the old city represents snapshots in time of when different groups or cultures were able to extert their influence on the design of the city; in particular, there is strong Moorish influence which can be found in the still standing mosques scattered around the city.
La Granja Escalators represent a contemporary intervention into the steep landscape of Toledo, offering a modern and geometric escalator for people to better access the city up on the hill. Making use of the sharp incline, the escalator cuts directly into the hill to create a more efficient route to climb the hill and provide closer access to the city center. As the city enters a more modern age, it requires less and less for people to be kept out and more for people to come in, which the escalator helps to contribute.
La Iglesia de San Jerónimo El Real is one of the oldest churches in Madrid, built in the 16th century, and it is one of the many Roman Catholic churches spread around the city. It is considered to be designed in the “Isabelline Gothic” style, and its front steps create a larger public space or square, slightly uphill from one of Spain’s most famous art museums, El Prado.
El Prado features a vast collection of art pieces, including many from well-known primarily Spanish and European painters such as Goya, El Greco, Reubens, Caravaggio, and more. The museum itself was originally design in 1785 by order of Charles the Third; however, it is also well-known for its extension by Rafael Moneo--a contemporary entrance built into the landscape providing new access to the structure and extending a public space above through a rooftop terrace leading down directly from San Jerónimo.
Visit to the Temple of Debod and a sunset view of the city skyline. The Temple itself was disassembled then and reassembled in Madrid after being imported taken directly from Nubia as a part of an international program to preserve temples like this one.
The temple was constructed originally in the early 2nd century BCE, initially beginning with just one room and comissioned by Adikhalamani, the Kushite king of Meroë. It is dedicated to the goddess Isis and contains several chapels and a main hall in addition to the small museum added inside. On display on the outside, two large arches line up an axis leading to the main entrance to the temple above ground.
Day trip to Córdoba, Spain, and visit to the Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, also known as the C3A museum. Córdoba is one of the oldest cities in Spain, best known for its Moorish influence and for being the Muslim capital of Spain. The influence of Islamic design and culture can still be found in the city, which is best known for housing the Great Mosque of Córdoba, later converted into Christian Cathedral but still maintaining the same original mosque design in the majority of the structure.
The contemporary design of the C3A, also reflected by its especially modern and progressive exhibitions which is showcases, contrasts the older ornate style of the city’s overall architecture, and is located across the Guadalquivir river from the old city center and most of the older structures. The art museum opened in 2016 and highlights a form of experimental, almost more modern brutalist design. The galleries give the experience to the inhabitants of the space of an other-worldly cave, with vast ceilings and large concrete structural forms within, not necessarily legible on the outside of the building. The museum contains areas to gather and to explore, giving a sense of mystery, exploration, and experimentation in both architecture and art.
Visit to La Fundación Giner de los Ríos, originally established in 1916 as an institution built around the central ideology of protecting free and unrestrained education, which was especially progressive at the time and diverging from the primarily Catholic-only based education system in Spain at the time.
Completed in 2015, the school underwent a major renovation, creating a more modern structure to reflect the progressive ideals that the school was originally built around. The metal frame that surrounds the facades of the structures fills with a variety of vines and other plants which become more dense in the spring and summer and then more transparent in the fall and winter. When there is less light that can enter the building due to the season, more light can be let in. The complex features a major outside gathering space in the center with the use of granite on the ground to supplement the design, as well as a large, organic auditorium below for larger lectures. Curved classrooms inside the building facing the courtyard contrast the more geometric design of the facade on the exterior.
Visit to Galería de las Colecciones Reales, also known as the Spanish Royal Collection and located above the Campo del Moro park and gardens and directly below the Almudena Royal Cathedral and the Royal Palace in Madrid.
The inside gallery was designed by Manuel Blanco Lage, the Dean of the ETSAM Madrid School of Architecture, and it focuses on a design curated specifically to the pieces being showcased in the museum to tell the story of Spain’s past and its Royal lineage. Ancient ruins also discovered during the original construction of the museum were preserved in their original statewithin a lower floor of the museum deeper into the hill which the museum rests upon. The modern design of the museum’s interior works to frame the beauty of the anitque or ancient pieces being showcased, which also include paintings from El Greco and Goya.
Day trip to El Escritorial, a small town in the Spanish countryside northwest of Madrid. The town features one of the largest monastery complexes in Europe in addition to many modern contemporary homes, most of which are considered to be summer homes, built into the hilly landscape.
The visit included three luxury homes designed by Aranguren & Gallegos Architects: the Steel House, the Wood House, and the Concrete House. The Steel House in particular is impressive in the ways in which it frames views of the landscape and the old city below through the main masses of the structure and the large windows--the highest mass of which frames a view directly of the monastery in the distance. The Wood House on the other hand represents an adaptive reuse project, where an old, outdated vacation home was given a much more functional, clean, contemporary feel.
Day trip to Valencia and La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, a series of experimental architectural structures in the central band of natural park space that cuts through the center of the city from east to west. This band of public green space stretches from the wharf and boardwalk area touching the Mediterranean Sea and extending all the way to the old city center.
Santiago Calatrava is the architect who designed and led the construction of the series of elaborate, futuristic, massive structures, which include an opera house, a science museum, a 3D cinema, and an aquarium. The structures themselves are controversial in the flaws in their design and their excessive monumentality as an experimental form of architecture taking up a vast amount of space in the center of the city.