Negro de Anglona
is a stylish restaurant in Madrid created in a converted 17th century
Spanish palace, Palacio de Anglona, by architecture and interior design
virtuoso, Luis Galliusi. Known for his ability to combine unexpected
elements and to create elegant spaces, Galliusi has designed houses,
stores, hotels, restaurants, offices and clinics in Madrid, Paris,
Cairo, Mexico, Morocco, Indonesia and Miami. His client list includes
Manolo Blahnik, Chanel and Phillippe Starck. In the seven rooms of
Negro de Anglona, Galliusi has shown his usual flair. He has combined a
strong, black-and-white color palette ˜ including enormous
black-and-white, back-lit images of castles ˜ with ornate
floor-to-ceiling drapery and other, strong decorative elements. The
task of overseeing the predominantly Mediterranean menu has been
trusted to the 24-year-old chef, Aitor García Cerro. By Tuija Seipell
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.