Regional Archive and Library
Madrid, Spain
Mansilla + Tuñón Arquitectos

Mansilla + Tuñón Arquitectos wraps new structures around old to create a city block with an enlightened civic purpose

© Roland Halbe

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By David Cohn

The abundance of historic architecture in Spain, including monasteries, churches, palaces, fortifications, barracks, and hospitals, and the need to adapt these works for new uses, has promoted an approach to preservation in which contemporary elements or additions are grafted onto to historic structures with great freedom. Well-known examples include Enric Sòria and Jordi Garcés’s adaptation of a string of Gothic palaces for Barcelona’s Picasso Museum, or Rafael Moneo’s restructuring of a Neoclassical palace for the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. For Spain’s more recent industrial heritage, the case for a hearty mix of old and new is even stronger, as can be seen in Luis Mansilla and Emilio Tuñón’s conversion of the former Águila Brewery into the Regional Archive and Library of Madrid.

The Águila Brewery occupies a full block in Arganzuela, a former industrial district in the south of Madrid largely converted to residential use. The compound’s existing structures ranged from the original buildings of 1914, finished in a high-relief ornamental brick, to additions dating from the 1960s and ’70s. Mansilla and Tuñón won a competition in 1994 to convert the factory into an ambitious macrocultural center for Madrid’s regional government; the program was later scaled back to house the region’s main library and repository for its official documents.

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Location:
Madrid, Spain

Gross square footage:
430,500 sq. ft.

Total Construction Cost:
$75.3 million

Owner:
Comunidad de Madrid (Madrid Regional Government)

Architect:
Mansilla + Tuñón Arquitectos
Calle Rios Rosas nº11
tel/fax +34 913993067