40 NAD/ Design Solutions workers were taken to experience Madrid, in a trip to tell our friends, family, children and grandchildren.
/ 1 Oct /
Travelling 40 people together in a bus leaving from Évora and arriving to Madrid was a memorable time that NAD/ gave to his work team, since October 1st until the 3rd.
In this travel were designers, architects, developers, administratives and the technical staff, including our carpenter and the NAD/ Design Café staff.
The main goal of this trip was to overthrow our day-to-day professional borders and to get together all the group, having in mind the possibility to know an european capital and meet the major art points.
To renew team spirit, there is nothing better than a road trip, to revive ties, where you put aside the comfort and the velocity of a car.
You must bear curves and the impatience caused by a six hour ride, sharing snacks and founding ways to fulfill the time, such as singing, talking or playing games.
The arrival to Madrid is always a surprise! The whiteness of the typical Alentejo houses, the serenity and history that lives in Évora contrasts now with the rush hour scenery of the largest metropolis in Spain, that nowadays has six million inhabitants.
We pass by Plaza de Espãna, that connects the biggest arteries of the city, and then in Gran Vía the stores of the biggest brands begin to appear and also the neo-classic buildings from the beggining of the 19th century.
We arrive to Óscar Room Mate Hotel, an hotel with a very glamorous design. We drop the heaviness of the bags and go to dinner in a japanese restaurant, followed by a walk around Chueca, Gran Vía, Callao and Palacio Real. The murmur of the movida do not go unnoticed and some people join the fiesta.
Arrival /
/ 2 Oct /
On the next day, a sunny day with mild temperatures welcomes us. It doesn’t even look like Fall.
The next destination is Calle de Alcalá, the oldest and longest street in Madrid. We could now see more and with more detail - and register with our cameras - what we had already seen in a rush in the night of our arrival.
The neoclassical buildings, a lot of them being from state institutions, like the Bank of Spain, fulfill this avenue and make anyone stop.
Our journey through Calle de Alcalá get us to Barrio de Las Letras, known as one of the places with more cultural activity of the capital, where the first part of Cervantes’ book D. Quixote de La Mancha was printed, in 1967, and where writers like Lope de Vega and Quevedo lived.
We passed through a street full with messages, copper letters inserted in the floor. They were poems and literature quotes from several authors. Cars can’t pass through, because this space is for the pedestrians: it is to read, walk and stop when you want.
The next visit is Raquel Ponce’s art gallery, where we are kindly received by the director in order to give us the major guidelines about the space. One of the rooms is dedicated to sculpture and is used like a space of promotion of the young spanish artists that are searching for more visibility in the capital.
In the second room, the exhibition involves plastic arts and supports the diffusion of works of artists with low budget, but with their talent already proved in the illustration, painting an photography fields.
A few more steps and we arrive at La Caixa foundation, designed by the swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. A building with a sculptural look in steel, that grew up from an old electric station all built with bricks in the 19th century. Part of this architectonical project is a vertical garden composed by flowers and bushes.
In La Caixa foundation we are surprised by a temporary exhibition of the famous italian film-maker Federico Fellini, known for his fantasist and baroque inspiration, where we discovered his less known sides, like the fact that he was a journalist and cartoonist. His inspiration is also revealed, including the circus, the catholic repression, the eccentricity and the absurd.
The group also sees a series of letters between Salvador Dali and Federico García Lorca and some surrealist paintings of the painter.
Our tour continues. In the afternoon we went to the Thyssen Museum, located in the neo-classic palace Villahermosa, to visit the exhibition “Todo o Nada” from the peruvian photographer Mário Testino. A selection of 54 photos where two concepts oppose to each other: mode and nudity grounded in the photos published in magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair or Allure and some unpublished works from the photographer.
Following that, a visit to Circulo de Bellas Artes. The CBA, founded in 1880, is nowadays one of the more important private cultural centers of Europe. It also assumes an important role in Spain as a multidisciplinary cultural center in the fields of creation, diffusion and cultural management of the plastic arts, literature, science, philosophy, cinema and performing arts.
In CBA we have the opportunity to visit “Creación INJUVE 2010”, a show organized annually by the Spanish Institute of Youth to reveal new artistic talents.
Late in the afternoon there was also time to visit a bookstore specialized in visual arts and photography. This bookstore is one of the many sides of La Fabrica project, dedicated to the editorial communication and publishing areas.
We also visited an artistic space of the brand Camper, usually used to launch new products, where we watched a sketch made by actors.
There was still time for a night walk in La Latina area, that gave us the possibility to know an older part of Madrid, with their medieval close streets and a entertainment part.
Not only Design /
/ 3 Oct /
On Sunday, we went to know the head office of the Cervantes Institute, in Calle de Alcalá, and to visit “México Ilustrado: libros, revistas y cartales, 1920 - 1950”, celebrating the bicentenary anniversary of the mexican independence and the centenary of the revolution. A total of 400 pieces, by authors like Diego Riviera, Josep Renau or Ramón Gaya, that clarify how the political, economical and educational reforms spread in this period, using the new forms of artistic and literary expression.
Our last stop was the Matadero, an old slaughterhouse and a cattle market from 1928, in neo-mudejar style - a characteristic of the industrial building of that time, converted in 2005 into a contemporary creative center for cultural and artistic activities.
In the old refrigerating chamber we were surprised by the exhibition “Fin del Silencio” of the artist Carlos Garaicoa, in honor of the cuban capital, where seven rugs recreate pamphleteering sentences from the streets of Havana, having in mind the promotion of a dialogue between the physical structures and the modes of social organization.
There was still time to return to our youth, through an interactive and experimental exhibition with the evolution of the video games by Miyamoto, the author of the well-known Super Mario and his friend Luigi.
We had three days to walk through Madrid that were truly inspiring for all the NAD/ team. Here is the report to show latter to our friends, family, children and grandchildren.
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go go /
"Open Talk" /
NAD/ Team at Madrid /
Worker Man Brand /
Ascending the box /
Typographical evidences of Miyamoto's work /
All about picture! /
Dinner with chopsticks /
Low budget /
Have a seat! /
Carpets with flying words! /
Is it really a ship over Madrid!? /
superposition in Plaza del sol /
Through Gran Via. An example to follow, healthy and ecological!
all for the same reason /
12 hrs journey, 62 hrs abroad, 6 hrs sleep = 80hrs emotion /
The guilty sentence : " Are you freaking out?" /
A man and his work /
I slept with you /
¿ Hola, que tal ? Muchas Gracias /
Hanging /
Off we go for the next trip /
