The purpose of my trip was to see good old friends and take it easy for a few days, so this article is a treat for me and is basically a little account of what impressed me this time in Madrid because I’m always impressed or surprised by something every time I visit this city. This time it was Caixa Forum Madrid that did the job…
I was walking across the fabulous Paseo de Prado avenue when my head was turned at the sight of a vertical 600sq m garden (conceived by French artist Patrick Blanc as I later learnt) sprouting greenery a hundred feet into the air. Madrid’s newest addition to an already culturally-packed geography is certainly the Caixa Forum Building that was inaugurated at the end of February by the king and queen of Spain. Newly transformed from the old Central Eléctrica del Mediodía building, this iron-colored edifice is a truly impressive architectural feat. It is currently housing a new entrance lobby, café, galleries, restaurant and administrative offices and extends underground to contain a theatre, service rooms and parking, and a 650sq m public space.
Located between the Reina Sofia and the Prado museums, the new Caixa Forum, aptly named after the Catalan bank Caixa that financed the whole shebang, is the product of an enormous crew laboring since 2004. The Forum was ultimately designed by the prestigious Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, best known perhaps for their conversion of the giant Bankside Power Station in London to the new home of the Tate Museum of Modern Art and their recent work at Prada Tokyo, the Barcelona Forum Building and the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games.
As I walked towards the entrance, astonishment struck as this massive building appears to teeter on seemingly inadequate foundations. The design cuts away the base of the brick elevations, making it appear suspended above the ground. This base creates a mini-covered plaza under the brick shell, which now appears to float above street level. This sheltered space offers its shade to visitors and at the same time serves as an entrance.
The building is worth going to for the architecture alone. Upon entering from the plaza, Forum-goers are treated to a steel-encrusted staircase with a maze of matching piping on the ceiling. Beautifully baffling, but surely serving some practical purpose. In the floors below ground lie two rooms for conferences and an impressively illuminated auditorium that serves as a forum for the intellectual and social issues of the day.
Heading up the glossy-white staircase you can peer down on a freshly designed café and restaurant, allowing an impressive look at an MC Escher-esque and post-post-post modern staircase that is an exhibit in itself. In between these floors sit temporary art exhibits, currently of the modern sort, that leave you either scratching your head, thoroughly confused, or making up wacky interpretations that most certainly have no relevance to what the creator of such art had in mind.
While the forum is impressive, I was rightly advised to skip the blatant public relation side-rooms of the exhibit floors (2 and 3) which are plastered with all sorts of 3-D statistics, some interactive, outlaying sums of money that have been distributed throughout the years to humanitarian causes. One can even view a movie that further details such corporate benevolence and is filled with shots of the photogenic impoverished people whom La Caixa is supposedly working wonders for.
Whatever your take on the motives for constructing this architectural wonder, La Caixa has given the city a stunning addition to the already impressive area of Madrid that houses the country’s finest museums. Multifunctional, with plenty to offer and free to the public between 10am and 8pm every day of the week, the Caixa Forum should not be missed.