Alcalá 31’s Extreme Makeover: An Architecture for sculptor Juan Muñoz
Can we use material and economic resources devoted to ephemeral interventions to create longer-lasting spatial impact?
The design of the exhibition Juan Muñoz: Everything I See Will Outlive Me served as a pretext to rethink and reform the Alcalá 31 Exhibition Hall. This space, dedicated to art, is located at Madrid Region’s Cultural Department headquarters, at the former Banco Mercantil building designed by architect Antonio Palacios. Conceived by its curator, Manuel Segade, as "an installation of installations," the exhibition focused on Muñoz's last stage. The intense interaction of his late sculpture with the architecture that houses it prompted the need to devise a strategy to recover certain lost spatial qualities of the original building. Utilizing the resources and budget allocated for an (ephemeral) exhibition, a recovery of Palacios' architecture was carried out, rethinking access, circulation, and the coexistence of the exhibition space with administrative programs – all conceived for a (permanent) improvement of the building.
In 1943, Palacios conceived the Banking Operations Room as a gallery connecting Alcalá Avenue with Caballero de Gracia Street. However, since Madrid Region rented the building in 2002, the space underwent multiple interventions to transform this unique space into a classic contemporary museum "white box.” These attempts neutralized some of the original spatial logics of the building, hiding, in turn, some of its characteristic elements. Among the operations performed on the former Operations Room were: its subdivision by building walls in the lateral porticos, blocking natural light sources like windows or areas of the vaulted ceiling in favor of controllable artificial light, the repetition of security protocols, or the cladding of the pillars’ marble bases.
Alcalá 31’s Extreme Makeover reverses some of these interventions through actions such as the opening of a large window to recover natural light and the street sensation envisioned by Palacios; the elimination of subdivisions and cladding to expose the marble base of the pillars; the simplification of the access by removing intermediate reception spaces and incorporating the elevator area into the exhibition hall, or the creation of a more intuitive circulation for visitors and Comunidad de Madrid’s staff. On the upper floor, curtains are used to clarify movement throughout the building, which previously required the use of different stairs to access each side. This gesture allows visitors to circumnavigate the hall, avoiding visual contact with personnel and citizens in the administrative offices.
Ultimately, Alcalá 31’s Extreme Makeover highlights the uniqueness of Palacios' proposal in dialogue with Juan Muñoz's work, reclaiming the original qualities of the building as an excellent backdrop for contemporary art – moving away from the now outdated obsession with the neutral environment of the white box.
