Art Spaces - Caixa Forum
Caixa Forum: Corporate Responsibility or Long-Term Publicity Stunt?
By Andre Nakazawa
Any recent stroll down the Paseo de Prado has surely been interrupted by the sight...
Vertical Gardens
Caixa Forum Madrid
Hours Monday-Sunday, 10:00-20:00
Price: Free
Address: Paseo del Prado,
36
Metro/s: Atocha Line 1
Telephone/fax: 91 451 00 82
Entrance: free
By Andre Nakazawa
Any recent stroll down the
Paseo de Prado has surely been interrupted by the sight of a vertical garden
sprouting greenery a hundred feet into the air.
Welcome to the Caixa Forum. Newly transformed from the old Central
Electrica del Mediodia building, this iron-colored edifice is a truly
impressive architectural feat.
So what exactly lies inside
this eccentric new addition to Madrid’s
already culturally-packed geography?
Located between the Reina
Sofia and the Prado, the new Caixa Forum, aptly named after the Catalan bank
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.
As one walks towards the
entrance, astonishment strikes as this massive building appears to teeter on
the seemingly inadequate foundations. This base creates a mini-covered plaza semi-enclosed
by pleasing waterways.
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 it serves some practical purpose.
In the floors below ground lie
two rooms for conferences and an impressively illuminated auditorium to serve
as a forum for the intellectual and social issues of the day.
Heading up the gloss-white stairs
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 sits
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, it’s advisable 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 Madrid 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.
---Published 2008-02-28
