Carme Pinos: Caixaforum

Carme Pinos designed in Zaragoza a building which ‘feels like a city’ and which makes us feel part of it when we inhabit it. A museum and cultural centre that acts as a new landmark for the Spanish city.

Carme Pinos start the project of the Caixaforum by posing two challenges: to design a building that can ‘feel like a city’ – both due to its uniqueness and to the public spaces it generates – and to design a building which connects with distant perspectives when walking around, providing at the same time introspection when inside its exhibition halls.

The two challenges were solved by raising the level of the halls. This allows freeing the ground floor, where there are the more open and transparent spaces: the lobby and the store. The aim is to create public spaces, make the park extend into the city by passing under the building – a space which is lit at night with drawings obtained by perforating the plate, which in addition hides the structure supporting the elevated halls.

Estudio Carme Pinos, Caixaforum, Zaragoza, Spain. Photo © Estudio Carme Pinos

Below the raised halls there is a semi-underground garden that serves as the exit to the auditorium and which can also be considered an anteroom or outdoors catering area. Thus, the auditorium – located underground and accessible through the lobby – can be considered as halfway underground and directly connected to the city thanks to the garden.

The two suspended halls face each other at different levels in a way that the visitor who exits one hall has a view of the city below the other hall. The architects believe decompression and relaxation areas are necessary between both halls – i.e., between exhibitions. With this aim, the two halls are connected by escalators, offering a journey which allows to enjoy the distant views – completely different from the decontextualisation produced by elevators and which cannot offer the visitor any type of decompression.

On the upper part of the building and with views to the city are the coffee shop and the restaurant. Opposite to them and created by the different levels between halls, there is a terrace-bar which – keeping with the indoors restaurant – allows to enjoy fantastic views of the Ranillas meander and Expo Zaragoza.

Thanks to its unique and feasible structure, the building appears as a sculptural element amidst the park, a symbol of the progress of the technique and generosity of culture.