EXPANDED ARCHITECTURES. THE EXHIBITION PAVILION AT THE CASA DE CAMPO IN MADRID

Abstract

The recent rehabilitation of the Exhibition Pavilion, the former Ministry of Housing Pavilion, carried out in 1959 by Francisco de Asís Cabrero and Jaime Ruiz for the 4th International Country Fair, is an interesting example of a strategy implemented to recover architectures from the past, specifically those of the 20th-Century. In this way, the utility and usefulness of both the indoor and outdoor spaces of the buildings are adapted to new urban needs, accessibility requirements, and climate conditioning. The restoration has been implemented following the “compatible uses” envisaged in the current Special Plan as part of the action group’s initiative “Campus Asociativo de Madrid,” which includes not only this Exhibition Pavilion, but the Icona I and Icona II Pavillions in Valencia as well. In this context, we will analyze the intervention and operation strategies, starting from the assessment of the original building and its relationship with other referential architectures. Some examples of these are Mies van der Rohe’s restored works on IIT campus, which inspired Cabrero and Ruiz. We have promoted the debate on the recovery of buildings where the precedent projects improve the guidelines for the building’s use. We will conclude by showing the balance between the recovery of space, its experimental construction, and the transformation of the exhibition use into the new representative and administrative function of a permanent, but reversible nature, in what we have coined an “expanded architecture.”