Studio Banana documents the Madrid regional archive and library (“Complejo El Águila”) with explanations by its authors, the celebrated Spanish architecture duo Mansilla+Tuñón.
El Aguila Brewery has been converted and expanded into a regional library and archives of the city Madrid. It is a center for the preservation, custody and dissemination of the documentary heritage of the region aimed at ensuring the transparency of administrative processes and the rights of the citizen.
The Regional Archives has 30,000 square meters which are organized into three modules: contributions, storage and public attention. The storage building can hold slightly less than 100 km of shelves, divided into six apartments, surrounded by a thermal blanket for a double translucent facade that is a response to the challenge of the architectural design within the limits imposed by legislation fire prevention. The Regional Library covers 10,000 square meters. Contains a varied program of multimedia libraries in the renovated industrial spaces. The brewery silos that were used for storage now store books.
Mansilla+Tuñón Arquitectos is a Spanish architecture firm founded in Madrid in 1992 by Luis M. Mansilla (Madrid, 1959) and Emilio Tuñón Álvarez (Madrid, 1958).
Perhaps their most famous work to date is the MUSAC of León, Spain, the building that won the 2007 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture (Mies Van der Rohe prize). They have also won the public competitions to build the Águila Regional archive and Library in Madrid, the C.I.C.C.M. New Convention Palace in Madrid (2007), as well as the Museo de las Colecciones Reales (Spanish Royal Collections Museum), also in Madrid.
They are teachers at the ETSAM school in Madrid and have taught at the Graduate School of Design in Harvard University, the EPFL in Lausanne, the Nueva Escuela de Arquitectura in Puerto Rico and the Städelschule in Frankfurt.
Their works has been widely published and exhibited in some of the most prestigious magazines, book editions and museums in the world. In 2009 they directed the Biennial X of Spanish Architecture.
Interview by Studio Banana TV. Translation by Andy Marlow.
Mansilla+Tuñón official site
El Águila archive and library building
Mansilla+Tuñón on Wikipedia
MUSAC building
Mies Van der Rohe prize
GSD Harvard
Biennial of Spanish Architecture
