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| 19:33 Thu 21 Aug 2008 |
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food / dining Arola at Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid
food / dining Arola at Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid
Arola at Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid |
Thursday, 19 April 2007 |
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 Spain's National Museum, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid opened 15 years ago in a hospital designed in 1769 by Francesco Sabatini, the court architect to King Charles III. The Reina Sofia Museum, named after Spain's Queen Sofia, soon needed more room and in 2005, it gained a spectacular extension. Designed by the Parisian architect Jean Nouvel with Madrid's b720 Arquitectos and Alberto Medem, the 8,000 square-metre (86,000 square-foot) extension is a full-blown Nouvel with his trademark of constant interplay of transparency, shadows and light. (This is the same Nouvel whose work Brad Pitt so admires that he and Angelina Jolie named their daughter, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, after him). The extension consists of three pavilions arranged around a central court and covered with a canopy of polished, lacquered aluminum stretching over from the existing building like a large, ominous shadow. To allow shafts of light to flow in, Nouvel has punctured holes into the aluminum plane.  Madrid-based Vidal y Asociados Arquitectos was then presented with the challenge of designing the interior of the museum's 890-square-metre Arola Restaurant without hindering, changing or covering any of Nouvel's outrageously bold building details. The rocket-red, shiny, bulging ceiling, the glass walls and all the concrete and metal had to become part of the interior of the restaurant named for its culinary master, two-Michelin-star restaurateur Sergi Arola. The resulting restaurant interior defies verbal explanation. The tables don't look like tables, they are more like parts of an unfinished experiment. These Band tables plus Sara and RS chairs were all designed specifically for this space. The lighting -- mainly hidden in the tables and floors - is wireless and rechargeable so that the wiring does not intrude the space. All this light adds to the eerie feeling of things moving and constantly reflecting each other. The atmosphere is both restless and calm, dynamic and serene. It certainly does not feel like any restaurant you've seen before. By Tuija Seipell.  |
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