Store of knowledge

Century-old brick warehouses and brewery buildings smarten up at Madrid's municipal library-archive complex by Mansilla + Tuñón

Ian Phillips -- Interior Design, 10/1/2003 12:00:00 AM

"It's never been in the Spanish mentality to rehabilitate our architectural heritage," Ainoa Prats of Mansilla + Tuñón Arquitectos explains. "This project can be considered the first where the political will existed to transform industrial buildings into a cultural facility."

This particular facility is the Biblioteca Regional de Madrid Joaquín Leguina, the archive and library where all books published in the Spanish capital are deposited, along with every document relating to municipal administration. Situated in the Arganzuela district, near Rafael Moneo's Atocha station, the sprawling complex represents part of Madrid's efforts to extend its cultural axis farther south, to an area traditionally forgotten by the authorities.

The city block now occupied by the library and archive once belonged to a brewery, El Aguila, and not much more was known about its abandoned buildings. After winning the competition for the project, principals Luis M. Mansilla and Emilio Tuñón managed to discover only that the earliest brick structures dated from about 1913. Others were added up to the 1970's, the old mixed with the new. Covered in graffiti, they were rented out for film shoots and raves. Two floors of one building still held huge brewing vats.

Madrid authorities determined that certain brick buildings had to be preserved. In addition, Mansilla + Tuñón retained the steel barley silos—as an industrial icon for the area—and transform them into the library's stacks. The architects razed many of the other brewery buildings and replaced them with four larger ones. Some stand only 13 feet apart, permissable because of existing footprints, and several are linked by enclosed bridges.

The complex now comprises three distinct units. The library proper consists not only of the barley silos but also of an administration building, a delivery and registry facility for arriving books, and an old malt house, now converted into reading rooms and a music, film, and video library. The archive comprises three buildings: a delivery and repair facility and a depository for municipal documents, both new construction, as well as a brick warehouse renovated to hold offices and a reading room. Finally, there's a new cultural center with an auditorium and exhibition space.

For new buildings, Mansilla + Tuñón deliberately adopted an industrial aesthetic and limited the construction materials to brick, glass, steel, wood, and white concrete. That's typical of the practice's approach: laying down initial restrictions and creating multiple combinations using very few elements. Inside, floors are wood or treated concrete. Facades, meanwhile, are mostly translucent channel glass, as are walls in the renovated library building's lobby. "We used the same materials for the interior of the rehabilitated buildings and the exterior of the new ones, as if we turned a sock inside out," says Tuñón.

Two layers of channel glass, 27 inches apart, surround the new municipal depository. In the gap between the layers, the architects inserted fluorescent lighting, which makes the building glow in the dark. Behind the glazing run perimeter corridors, buffers helping guarantee that the documents stored at the core of each floor plate are kept at a constant temperature.

Because the depository's six floors are identical, Mansilla + Tuñón assigned each a distinguishing color—chosen from the collected correspondence of art historians John Berger and John Christie, I Send You This Cadmium Red…. Among those picked: a sunny yellow, Yves Klein blue, and a red used by German artist Joseph Beuys. In the new delivery and repair facility, cross beams painted three different reds give a nod to the brick of surrounding buildings.

In the malt house turned library, Mansilla + Tuñón conserved a number of original features. The conical forms of smaller steel silos descend from the building's wooden roof beams, left exposed in the top floor's music, film, and video library. Three reading rooms' old steel columns, however, are now enclosed in oak constructions recalling the profile of Constantin Brancusi's famous column. In the lobby atrium, balconies exhibit brewery equipment discovered on the site—a more vivid chronicle of the library's past than any history book.

Previous spread: At the Madrid brewery warehouse that Mansilla + Tuñón converted into an archive for the Biblioteca Regional de Madrid Joaquín Leguina, the lobby features oak-clad walls and a reception desk of steel-framed laminated glass, backlit by neons.

Opposite top: In the library's lobby atrium, which occupies an old malt house, the architects displayed brewery equipment found on the site. The enameled-glass doors of lockers, provided for the public, form a colorful composition beneath corridors walled off by channel glass. Opposite center: The library's new administration building is roofed in zinc. Opposite bottom: An oak-paneled stair- case slices through the municipal archive's depository building, also new construction.

Right: Brick latticework screening the windows of the archive's reading room is original to the warehouse building. Inside the 33-foot-high room, Mansilla + Tuñón placed chairs by Charles and Ray Eames and oversize tables, surfaced in plastic laminate.

Previous spread, left: In a meeting room for library administration, leather-covered chairs by Antonio Citterio surround a custom table topped in plastic laminate.

Previous spread, right, clockwise from top left: Oak and channel glass define a bridge between two archive buildings. Oak clads a staircase in the archive's converted warehouse. In the same building, a single flight of stairs provides roof access. Mansilla + Tuñón built oak enclosures around steel columns in a library reading room.

Opposite top: In the music, film, and video library, atop a converted malt house, steel silos and wooden roof beams remain. Opposite bottom: For an office in the old archive building, the architects installed custom wall-mounted cabinetry with enameled-glass doors.

Top: The cultural center's auditorium seats 150. Center: A delivery and registry facility, which handles all books published in Madrid, is connected by undergound passageway to the library's converted malt house. Bottom: In the new archive depository building, a corridor's aluminum wall panels are spray-painted according to a color-coding system.

PROJECT TEAM: MATILDE PERALTA; OSCAR F. AGUAYO; JAIME GIMENO; ANDRS REGUEIRO; FERNANDO GARCA-PINO; MARA LINARES; DAVID NADAL; ROBERT REININGER. CHAIRS (ARCHIVE READING ROOM, MEETING ROOM, ARCHIVE OFFICE): VITRA. FIRE DOORS (ARCHIVE CORRIDOR): TECSESA. CHAIRS (LIBRARY READING ROOM): FRITZ HANSEN. PENDANT FIXTURES: ERCO. EMERGENCY LIGHTING: DAISALUX. FACADE RESTORATION: ARTEMN. EXTERIOR GLAZING: VITRAL. WINDOWS: GRAVENT. ELECTRICAL ENGINEER: CYMI. LIGHTING CONTRACTOR: CARANDINI. GENERAL CONTRACTOR: DRAGADOS OBRAS Y PROYECTOS.