The four-storey building occupies the historic Telefónica Building at the top of Madrid's most central street, the Gran Via. The difficult relationships between the reclaimed spaces of the old building has generated the central focus of the project: a prominent, cohesive circulation path that connects all galleries and cultural spaces on the upper floors to one another and to the street.
Two and a half quadrants of the structural grid abutting the façade saw their existing floor plates demolished to create a vertical atrium space into which a large spiral staircase was inserted. The staircase weaves through an organic, sculptural form which serves simultaneously as lateral-load bracing for the building's façade — necessary after the removal of the floor slabs — and dead-load support for the stair helix. A high-capacity glass elevator completes the vertical circulation nucleus.
The galleries take their form from the shape of the Telefónica Building. In these spaces the floors were stripped of everything non-essential to the original structure. Columns were left exposed and the ceiling covered with a suspended metal mesh. The spaces left bare both reveal the original riveted-steel structure from the 1920s and allow for the maximum freedom for exhibit-specific installations.
Architects: Moneo Brock
Direction: Belén Moneo, Jeff Brock
Project Architect: Andrés Barrón
Team: Maria Pierres, Albert Rubio
Collaborators: Gonzalba Asociados, José Luis Gonzalo, Cristina González
Exhibition design: DADA NYC, Jeremy Dawkins, Maki Smith
MEP engineers: Úrculo Asociados, MEP engineers, Rafael Úrculo, Sergio Rodríguez
Structural engineers: NB 35, Jesús Jiménez Cañas, Oscar Vidal
Exhibition consultant: Enrique Bonet
