Foster + Partners newest project in Madrid was announced today – the comprehensive refurbishment of the Plaza Colón building at the heart of the city. Located at one of the most major intersections in Madrid, the project seeks to completely transform and revitalise the existing structure to create a new iconic landmark that reflects the prestige and importance of the site.
The site has great historical significance and is a key part of the long-term vision for the development of Madrid, at the moment it is the second project that Norman Foster develops in the Spanish capital after winning the contest for the expansion of the Prado Museum. The design by Forter + Partners is located on the junction of Madrid´s main north-south artery, Paseo de la Castellana, with Génova Street, the primary east-west axis of the city, the building faces the bustling Plaza de Colón, one of the largest public spaces in the city that is flanked by Spain’s National Library and MAN, Museo Arqueológico Nacional.

Axis also marks the confluence of three different districts of the city: Barrio de Salamanca, with its luxury shopping and residences, Chamberí, the global financial hub combined with lively art galleries, and Centro the oldest quarter of the city, full of tradition.
 
“Situated at one of the most important intersections in Madrid, Axis is a new landmark for the city. It establishes a new vision for the existing 1970s structure, stripping it back to its essence and creating a flexible, future-proof building that will endure. Its striking façade will also nurture a new identity and sense of place for the city of Madrid,”  said Norman Foster, Founder and Executive Chairman, Foster + Partners

The four-storey building is characterised by its distinctive stainless-steel diagrid façade that gives it a strong visual identity. The optimised geometry responds to structural efficiency, minimising energy and material consumption. Shops on the ground floor draw pedestrians into the building, with the permeable building envelope ensuring maximum visibility, allowing daylight to flood in and creating a friendly and inviting experience.

Responding to Madrid’s Mediterranean climate, the building features a soaring atrium that connects the retail at the base with the offices above, pulling the natural greenery deep into the building. The building is crowned by a sky terrace – full of greenery, light and life – for informal meetings and gatherings against the backdrop of the Plaza de Colón. An innovative screen made from catenary structures, planted with natural vegetation creates distinctive open-air rooftop experience – a rarity in Madrid.

The building has a flexible floor plan throughout, with the core with lifts, stairs and services focussed along the south façade. This affords a clear span throughout the rest of the floorplate, capable of accommodating multiple uses, from a single tenant to a multi-let floor. The building is naturally lit and ventilated with maximised floor-to-ceiling heights, and the design retains the existing structure of the building erected in the 1970’s, reinforcing the project’s innovative sustainable approach.

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Norman Foster is considered by many to be the most prominent architect in Britain. He won the 1999 Pritzker Architecture Prize and the 2009 Príncipe de Asturias de las Artes Prize.

Lord Foster rebuilt the Reichstag as a new German Parliament in Berlin and designed a contemporary Great Court for the British Museum. He linked St. Paul's Cathedral to the Tate Modern with the Millennium Bridge, a steel footbridge across the Thames. He designed the Hearst Corporation Building in Manhattan, at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue.

He was born in Manchester, England, in 1935. Among his firm’s many other projects are London’s City Hall, the Bilbao Metro in Spain, the Canary Wharf Underground Station in London and the renovated courtyard of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery in Washington.

In the 1970s, Lord Foster was one of the most visible practitioners of high-tech architecture that fetishized machine culture. His triumphant 1986 Hong Kong and Shanghai bank building, conceived as a kit-of-parts plugged into a towering steel frame, was capitalism's answer to the populist Pompidou Center in Paris.

Nicolai Ouroussoff, The Times’s architecture critic, has written that although Lord Foster’s work has become sleeker and more predictable in recent years, his forms are always driven by an internal structural logic, and they treat their surroundings with a refreshing bluntness.

Awarded the Prince of Asturias of the Arts 2009.

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Published on: June 20, 2018
Cite: "New buildgin by Norman Foster in Madrid. Designs for Axis Madrid revealed by Foster + Partners" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/new-buildgin-norman-foster-madrid-designs-axis-madrid-revealed-foster-partners> ISSN 1139-6415
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