CaixaForum Madrid is a post-modern art gallery in the centre of Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. It is sponsored by the Catalan-Balearic bank la Caixa

La Caixa

La Caixa , formally Caixa d'Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona , is currently Europe’s leading savings bank and Spain's third largest financial institution, with a network of over 5,500 branches, more than 8,100 ATMs, a workforce in excess of 27,000 and more than 10.7 million...

 and located next to the Paseo del Prado

Paseo del Prado

The Paseo del Prado is one of the main boulevards in Madrid, Spain. It runs north-south between the Plaza de Cibeles and the Plaza del Emperador Carlos V , with the Plaza de Cánovas del Castillo lying approximately in the middle...

 at number 36.

It was constructed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron

Herzog & de Meuron

Herzog & de Meuron Architekten, BSA/SIA/ETH is a Swiss architecture firm, founded and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland in 1978. The careers of founders and senior partners Jacques Herzog , and Pierre de Meuron , closely paralleled one another, with both attending the Swiss Federal Institute of...

 from 2001 to 2007, which combined an old unused industrial building and hollowed it out at the base and inside and placed on top further floors which are encased with rusted steel. Next to it is an art installation of green plants growing on the wall of the neighbouring house by French botanist Patrick Blanc

Patrick Blanc

Patrick Blanc is a botanist, working at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, where he specializes in plants from tropical forests...

. The red of the top floors with the green of the wall next to it form a contrast. The green is in reflection of the neighbouring Royal Botanical Gardens

Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid

The is an botanical garden located at , next to the Prado Museum in Madrid ....

.

Although the CaixaForum is a modern building, it also exhibits retrospectives of artists from earlier time periods and has evolved into one of the most visited museums in Madrid.

External links

• CaixaForum Madrid, official website of the Caixa Foundation (in Spanish)
• Images and plans on Arcspace
• Interview with Jacques Herzog about the design of the CaixcaForum, on studiobanana.tv