Opening up a Museum
Reconfiguration of the Reina Sofía Museum public areas and access points
The current classic building of the Reina Sofía Museum is, due to successive historical vicissitudes, a rigid structure that turns its back to the Paseo del Prado and does not offer the urban and functional appeal expected from a contemporary art museum.
To transform that severe character and bring the Institution closer to a future improvement and extension of the Paseo del Prado ―which should include a renovated Atocha Station, as well as more green and pedestrian areas―, the Museum resolved in 2022 a competition of which COLL-BARREU ARQUITECTOS was the winner.
From the beginning, the proposal was intended to be an intervention without intervention. That is, an intervention without the addition of any new piece, without the construction of attached elements ―something really infrequent in architectural interventions that extend or reconvert cultural buildings. The pre-existences helped: the inherent capabilities of José de Hermosilla old buildings allowed them to be transformed without major changes in their physical reality.
The Museum's main headquarters are currently made up of the named Sabatini and Nouvel buildings, the first of which was the institution's first headquarters until the extension built by Jean Nouvel was completed in 2005. The first building was designed and built by the architect José de Hermosilla as part of a larger project that was to be the General Hospital of Madrid. After numerous social and political vicissitudes and interventions by other architects, including Juan de Villanueva, Hermosilla's systematic and sanitary blocks were restored and rehabilitated in the 20th century by Antonio Fernández Alba, whose work allowed the building to reopen its doors on May 26, 1986 as the Reina Sofía Art Center. Alba's academic and constructive rigor was brilliantly joined in 1988 by the three elevator cores designed by José Luis Íñiguez de Onzoño and Antonio Vázquez de Castro. On September 10, 1992, the building was reopened as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.
Alba kept as the Museum's main entrance the old entrance to the General Hospital, which originally served only as an exit from the apothecary's shop to the small medicinal herb garden, deservedly promoted to the first entrance as a result of the non-existence of the hospital's northern sections, which remained unbuilt. The access of the pharmacy, then to the General Hospital, later to the Art Center and currently to the National Museum opens onto the street of Santa Isabel, the current Juan Goytisolo square, an urban space of complex topography, closed by buildings and only connected to Atocha street through two small streets.
The integration of the Museum into the cultural corridor of the Paseo del Prado was recognized as an unfulfilled aspiration already in the 1980s. However, the rigid directionality of the façade towards the square (a square that did not exist in the 18th century) absented the building from the Prado urban axis. Jean Nouvel's extension, opened to the public in 2004 and 2005, increased this distance, as the entrances to the new buildings were located in the areas of the site furthest away from the Paseo del Prado.
The project by COLL-BARREU ARQUITECTOS responded to the Museum's desire to orient the building and consequently the physical presence of the Institution towards the axis of the Paseo del Prado, without undermining or contradicting the preceding architecture. This historical recovery is particularly necessary at the present time due to the coincidence of a series of urban improvements: the modifications that will foreseeably be made to the Plaza de Juan Goytisolo, which will make the current access through the façade of Santa Isabel Street more difficult; the aforementioned urban reorganization of the entire neighborhood which is going to become a much more walkable area, with expected pedestrian movements in continuity with the Paseo del Prado; the renovations and expansion underway at Atocha station, which will foreseeably increase the flow of passengers; and lastly, a significant number of the Museum's own needs, including the improvement of the exterior spaces, the public service areas, the store, cafeteria, restaurant and, of course, the increase in the exhibition surface within its own historical enclosure.
The project moves the main public access to the façade that the building offers to the Paseo del Prado. The new access is not designed as a representative entrance ―as it is usual in a museum, and as it is the current Reina Sofía entrance in the Plaza Juan Goytisolo―, but becomes as a system of scattered accesses, in keeping with the reality of the building, that is, with the rational and egalitarian character of the existing openings in the old hospital façade designed by Hermosilla and, mainly, with the reality of contemporary society, plural, diverse in its approaches and identities and which does not require the dirigisme of a “main door”.
A democratic museum of contemporary art must be permeable and have as many connections as possible with the city. The façade walls would allow access, through the restoration of the current openings, along the entire perimeter.
The experience of access, the use of services and indoor and outdoor places offered by the Museum to the visitor (with or without a ticket), the ticketing self-management and the concept of the circulation change completely. The proposed Museum would be more functional and transparent and would allow the visit to be more freely decided by the user.
Two essential elements in the new proposal and user experience are the reconfiguration and consolidation of the classic courtyard and the extension of the Íñiguez de Onzoño and Vázquez de Castro elevator routes. Currently, the first floor of the building has a very limited connection with the building as a whole, since it remains almost invisible from the rest of the floors and is not connected to the exo-cores, the main vertical circulation of the Museum. This floor is, however, the only one that can allow a direct connection between the building and the Paseo del Prado. The new configuration of the garden and the extension of the elevator route to the first floor allow the visitor to understand the material reality of the Museum and the location of the galleries, to comfortably access the upper floors and to physically experience the light and the presence of nature.
The project, in short, would provide real continuity between the Paseo del Prado, the vaulted wings of the Museum and the interior garden. The Reina Sofía Museum would finally be incorporated, both physically and conceptually, into the Prado city garden.
