6th Edition of Open House Madrid, ‘Special Edition’

The sixth edition of the international architecture and design festival in Madrid will allow visitors to visit the most interesting and inaccessible buildings in Madrid for free, settling in as the great day of open doors for Madrid architecture.

In addition, the "Premios Ciudad Open House Madrid" Awards ’will be presented, which aim to recognize and publicize the most innovative, social and committed proposals that will mark the future of cities.

Open House Madrid is a non-profit initiative whose objective is to bring Madrid's architecture and design closer to society for free. Since it held its first edition in 2015, the festival has established itself as the benchmark architecture event in Spain. The support of more than 350,000 visitors from all over the world over the past five editions has made Open House Madrid a must-see for lovers of architecture and design.

Madrid is part of Open House Worldwide, the first network of architecture festivals in the world, visited by millions of people in more than 40 cities (London, Lisbon, New York, Barcelona, ​​Buenos Aires, Milan, Rome, Sydney, etc. ).

The festival has the collaboration of the Madrid City Council, which by supporting initiatives such as Open House Madrid seeks to accelerate the reactivation of the capital's tourist activity.

As in previous editions, the festival will focus its attention on the figure of a relevant architect. This year tribute is paid to the figure of Alejandro de la Sota (Pontevedra, 1913; Madrid, 1996), one of the masters of Spanish architecture of the 20th century. His most recognized and unanimously admired work, the gymnasium of the Colegio Maravillas (Madrid, 1960-1962), can be visited during the celebration of the festival.

Alejandro de la Sota's great vocation for teaching architecture and his concern that his work and thought could be easily accessible to students, researchers and architects, led his heirs to create in 1997 the Foundation that bears his name with the objective of preserving and spreading his work. Since then, the Foundation has cataloged and digitized the archive and created the website that contains one of the world's most complete digital archives of the work of an architect. On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Alejandro de la Sota in 2013, a further step was taken in opening the archive to collaboration and participation, making it a unique experience at the international level in the field of architecture.

Visitors to Open House Madrid will be able to see the Foundation's archive, which holds all the plans, models, photographs and drawings of the architect. In addition, other activities have been scheduled to honor Alejandro de la Sota, including an exhibition on his figure.