Red Bull Music Academy
“NAVE DE LA MUSICA”, MATADERO, MADRID
INDIVIDUAL REFLEXION
The Music Hall of Matadero is the place where the Red Bull Music Academy was established during the months of October and November of this year. For the last fourteen years, Red Bull organizes this event in different cities around the world, one city each year. London, Barcelona, Melbourne, New York or Rome have been some of the cities where, since 1998, the Academy was established following always the same philosophy: offer to worldwide participants, who have been strictly chosen, a place to learn from the bests. The academy organized some lectures, concerts, workshops and so on during their period in our city.
After the closing of the event, Matadero decided to keep the structure there for the next three years to shelter some other events related to art and music. From the 1st to the 18th of December Matadero have opened the place, which is located in “Nave 15”, to the public.
The architect office Langarita-Navarro designed this space in a really short period of time. The 2011 Academy was supposed to be located in Tokyo, but, after the earthquake and the problems in Fukushima, the organization decided to move it to Madrid. The architects made an amazing project in just 5 months. It is a temporarily structure located in one of Matadero’s raw spaces. The condition of this project was to do it conserving the raw space like it was in the beginning, so what they actually did was to put a “platform” inside the space.
This space, which is quite huge, is distributed in sections: studios, offices, lounge, recording studio and a place for lectures. As it was a temporally structure, the architects decided to use recycled materials that can be used again and also planted a garden that can be moved to other parts of Matadero after this three years. I specially like what they did with the sandbags as walls, as it is a very strong acoustic insulator, is cheap and is a recycled material. It’s a project that causes a shocking feeling when you see it, specially because of the combination of colours and textures of the different rooms. For example, the lectures room and the lounge have a black-white stripes roof and colourful chairs, that creates a interesting combination of colours. Here we can also see a contrast between the plastic roof and the sandbag-wall. I also like the studios and how are organized around a “patio” and their big windows that gives natural light to each studio.
I think the Red Bull Music Academy is a great opportunity for new musicians to learn and develop themselves as they want to. It is very important that everyone, from everywhere, have the same opportunity to be selected, go, meet new people, learn and enjoy. About the project, I like the way that the architects decided to design it, as a temporally structure, with recycling materials, “outside” space as a big garden, organized in blocks and so on. The main material is wood, that combines perfectly with green of the outside, is a very colourful place, and it look like you are working in a garden instead of the city of Madrid. I think this temporally structure has lots of opportunities and ways to use it as a concert hall or music studio but also as a place to exhibit some artworks or thing non-related to music.
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