Taking as a reference elements of urban culture that make intensive use of the streets, the rehabilitation project by estudioHerreros integrates a series of mini-projects that are understood as programmatic and spatial experiments. In direct contact with the corridors, spaces for micro-galleries, a library, and areas housing vinyl record and comic book collections, the complex presents a highly detailed construction that lends dynamism to its interior layout. Organized on two levels, the program accommodates various clearly identifiable yet easily adaptable spaces, with the existing concrete structure playing a prominent role.
Based on an ambiguous scheme that blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior, SOLO CSV combines spaces for lounging, waiting, meeting, and contemplation in different dimensions. The center aspires to position itself as a leading cultural hub in Madrid, a space capable of revitalizing peripheral structures and activating new ways of conceiving art.
SOLO CSV by estudioHerreros. Photograph by Luis Díaz Díaz.
Project description by estudioHerreros
SOLO CSV transforms a former industrial building into a centre for experimentation, debate, and the celebration of art in unexpected formats and contents. Inside, a public circulation spine of shifting scale—part corridor, part lively urban street—connects, crosses, and reveals a diverse and often indeterminate programme distributed over 4,000 sqm across two floors.
This loop, with its ambiguous interior–exterior character, expands and contracts to create spaces for rest, encounter, and contemplation. It is punctuated by service lifts and staircases, most notably two key vertical connections—one in timber and the other in stone-like terrazzo—that link both levels at strategic points where their layouts coincide.
The inverse of this circulation loop is organised into three families of spaces: the Institutions, the Cabinets, and the Facilities, which together activate this large cultural machine.
The Institutions include the Agora, seating 400 people; the highly adaptable Exhibition Hall; the Greenhouse, a striking glass-and-metal structure inserted within the original building; and the Workshop, which accommodates offices, an art restoration area, and meeting rooms at ground level. In the basement lies the Museum, a dark, columned hall defined by its monumental structure. All these spaces are clearly defined yet easily reconfigurable, and strongly express the building’s original concrete frame.
The Cabinets are small architectural manifestos embedded within the larger whole: a sequence of mini-projects conceived as programmatic, material, and spatial experiments. They respond to highly specific uses rooted in urban culture and its intensive occupation of the street: food trucks, micro-galleries, cinema–studio, documentary archive, library, vinyl collection, kiosk, assembly room, haunt, chat room, club. Each is carefully crafted, visibly constructed, and directly connected to the circulation loop.
The Facilities form SOLO’s back-of-house, essential to the operation and maintenance of the complex. They include staff dining and meeting areas, collection storage, cloakrooms, kitchens and pantries, bathrooms, racks and servers, packing rooms, and plant rooms—supporting a community of forty people and enabling a project in constant transformation.
The architecture clearly distinguishes the new intervention from the existing structure. It does so through an industrial–craft material palette combining environmentally conscious resources—such as timber and recycled cement panels—with more technical elements: steel plates, angles, and sheets in multiple configurations. Beyond this material language, however, SOLO CSV is fundamentally a work of craftsmanship. The technicians, and above all the artisans—aware of the fragile future of their knowledge—have committed themselves with unusual dedication, making this project perhaps an unrepeatable case.
SOLO CSV takes its name from the nearby Cuesta de San Vicente and lies within walking distance of Plaza de España, the Royal Palace gardens, and the historic Príncipe Pío station. Its presence in the public realm merges with the composition of the unassuming façade of yet another building within the city’s humble urban fabric as it descends towards the river. As with its first venue, completed in 2017 and also designed by estudioHerreros—equidistant from Retiro Park, CentroCentro, and the Prado Museum—SOLO CSV now aspires to become a peripheral gravitational centre for cultural activity in Madrid, aligned with the recent tendency to seek opportunities in less central neighbourhoods, revitalising existing structures and hosting new artistic formats.
