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MediaLab-Prado

Imagen Subliminal

Discover the restored building by means of a creative cross section.


A creative combination of varied viewpoints in this video by Imagen Subliminal allows the audience to experience simultaneously the various ambiences of the new arts center designed by Langarita-Navarro Arquitectos in Madrid for MediaLab-Prado, a city-funded organization dedicated to the production of art and digital culture.

At certain points in the video, a series of short live footages - that are inscribed in the cross section of the building, each showing a different location - are played at the same time. This apparently simple and yet sophisticated technical solution generates multiple perspectives on the architecture in order to unveil its potential and the numerous activities and interactions that animate this new creative hub, both a research laboratory and an exhibition space where visitors are highly encouraged to participate.

"The Thing", which is how architects María Langarita and Víctor Navarro call their intervention, is a neon-lit, color-changing and flexible volume. It seems as if a living creature seeped into a 1920s industrial building, "La Serrería Belga" (the Belgian Sawmill), one of the first buildings in Madrid constructed in reinforced concrete. Langarita and Navarro chose to maintain the façade intact and the overall building minimally restored, while installing the Thing on the inside, behind the walls of this pre-existing concrete shell, like a layer overlapping the original construction. Imagen Subliminal's camera reveals the scenographic coexistence of the new lightweight intervention and the old concrete structure in Langarita-Navarro's renovated complex and its attitude - the architects say - "to accept more layers and transformations in the future."

Credits

Mentioned project: Medialab-Prado, contemporary art center (2012)
Project location: Madrid, Spain
Production: Imagen Subliminal
Music: Holbach
Structural engineers: Mecanismo
Installations: Úrculo Ingenieros
Landscaping: Lorena García Rodríguez

Spain 2012
Duration: 2'42''