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Spain grants final approval for Foster + Partners Museo del Prado expansion

2021-09-30T13:42:00-04:00

Following a six-year delay fueled by the Covid-19 crisis and by political and financial tensions reverberating throughout the country, Spain’s council of ministers has awarded Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado $42 million to complete a long-anticipated expansion. The country will dole out the funds over a three-year span, allowing the institution to renovate the neighboring Hall of Realms, which it purchased in 2012.

The Foster + Partners-led Museo del Prado expansion was originally announced in 2016 and planned to coincide with the museum’s 200th anniversary three years later. The project, which is being coordinated with the help of Madrid-based Rubio Arquitectura, will focus on the adjacent 17th-century Hall of Realms that was acquired by the museum in 2012, the same year Spain’s unemployment rate reached a plateau of nearly 25%.

The government-approved plan would come in three stages separate from the Ministry of Culture’s annual budget. The expansion will be complete by 2024, according to El Pais.

First glimpse of Foster + Partners and Rubio Arquitectura's Museo del Prado expansion scheme

2016-11-28T18:42:00-05:00

The Museo del Prado in Madrid has big plans for its 200th anniversary celebration in 2019. Among those plans is an expansion of the museum campus and the restoration of the historic Salón de Reinos, all of which Foster + Partners and Spanish practice Rubio Arquitectura will be in charge of designing. The team won over seven notable contenders in an international competition that included OMA, Nieto Sobejano, Souto Moura, and Gluckman Tang.

Following the museum's last major extension by architect Rafael Moneo in 1998, this expansion focuses on refurbishing the Salón de Reinos (or Hall of Realms), one of the surviving pieces of the former 17th-century Buen Retiro Palace. The expansion will also create additional gallery space for the Prado Museum's permanent and temporary exhibitions.

Read on for an excerpt from Foster + Partners' and Rubio Arquitectura's winning proposal, “Hidden Design”:

“The primary protagonist is the noble Hall of Realms, a monument which has gathered many layers o...