Reina Sofia Museum – Jean Nouvel

With his addition to the Reina Sofía National Museum Art Center in
Madrid, Jean Nouvel has managed to work in the shadow,
defying the idea that architecture, as Le Corbusier wrote in
"Toward a New Architecture", is “the masterly, correct, and magnificent
play of forms brought together in light.” Nouvel has covered the three independent pavilions arranged around a central
court with a hovering plane of polished, lacquered aluminum, which
extends from the museum’s old, existing building “like a shadow,” as Nouvel said.

The 86,000-square-foot canopy offers welcoming shade on Madrid’s
hot and cloudless summer days, at the cost of totally obscuring the project during the long winter months—although Nouvel has punctured the
roof in places to reveal patches of sky and admit shafts of light into
the court, internally covered with reflecting sheets. In this way, light from the sun is always directed towards the inner spaces, no matter where the sun is on any particular time.

First opened in 1986, the Reina Sofía Museum occupies an 18th-century
265,000-square-foot hospital , designed in 1769
by Francesco Sabatini, the court architect to King Charles III. Just a
block from the Prado Museum, it houses a comprehensive collection
of 20th-century Spanish art (including Picasso’s Guernica), which
attracts 1.5 million visitors a year.

In 1990, as part of an
intervention directed by Spanish architects José Luis Iñiguez de Onzoño
and Antonio Vázquez de Castro, British architect Ian Ritchie added glass elevator towers to the entry façade. Nine years
later, the museum held a limited competition with the goal of drawing
secondary activities out of the main building to free up space for the permanent collection. Of the twelve competing architects,
Nouvel won the first prize, Dominique Perrault the second, and Juan Navarro
Baldweg the third.

The addition’s triangular site, to the south west of the existing
museum, faces a congested avenue. Access to Nouvel’s building is from the central plaza, which opens to the street on
either end. Distinct from one another in program and personality, the
three pavilions contain, respectively: the library and bookshop; the
temporary exhibition galleries; and the restaurant and café, rising to
two auditoriums above.

The 24,000-square-foot library and 6,000-square-foot bookshop occupy a
volume designed to buffer the museum precinct from the boulevard. The
library’s soaring main reading room extends one story below grade, with
ground-level windows on either side, establishing a visual connection
between street and court, reminiscent of views through an aquarium.

In this way the Museum responded not only to its
proposed needs, but also to a clear call to transform the neighbourhood surrounding environment. By creating a public square –
as set forth in the building code of the new buildings and the south west façade of the current Museum – a space in the city and for
the city was created.

The Museum has increased more than 60% of the old
building’s surface area (51,297 square meters), now reaching 84,048
square meters. Thus, the Museo Reina Sofia now disposes of a privileged
exhibition space.