MAHOU MUSEUM  

Renovation of the Palace of the Duke of Infantado as Espacio Mahou

Location: Madrid, Spain

Client: Mahou

State: Competition

Year: 2016

THE MAHOU EXPERIENCES FACTORY

Behind the old walls of the Infantado Palace is La Fábrica, the new emblematic space of the Mahou company. La Fábrica is not only the meeting place between Mahou and the people of Madrid, but it is an authentic container of personal experiences linked to the Mahou identity.

DOUBLE IDENTITY

La Fabrica needs to infuse a new identity in the Palacio del Infantado in accordance with the Mahou identity. This requires a necessary reflection on the intervention to be carried out on the Palace, and the level of preservation of the original building, not only focusing on the architectural elements that have value in themselves, but also on the necessary preservation of the memory and identity that the Palace has built throughout its own history. The proposal aims to preserve this identity and make it compatible with the new identity that La Fábrica Mahou requires.

Identity of the Mahou space: Undoubtedly the identity associated with the new Mahou space must be linked to the approach of the beer-making process to the visitor. For this reason, this new space is conceived as an authentic factory, La Fábrica, where the required microbrewery is not confined to a room but completely invades the palace. Several beer production lines are included in the building, showing the variety produced by Mahou San Miguel. The tanks or tanks of all of them hang over the different rooms of the building, managing to transfer that new factory identity to the palace. To show the complete process, they even include: a small malt plantation in the courtyard and on the terrace of the building; and the barn, which becomes the starting point of all production lines, and a fundamental point of internal organization of the project.

But, as with the Mahou company itself, the identity of La Fábrica goes far beyond the mere manufacture of beer. The "going out of cañas" or "having a Mahou" are expressions that not only speak of drinking a beer, but also of a way of understanding and building our social relationships, where friendship, spontaneity, closeness, sharing, etc. , are fundamental values. The new Mahou space is not just a beer factory, it is a factory of personal stories: a factory of experiences.

Identity of the Palacio del Infantado: The analysis of the building's own history from its construction to the present day reveals the existence of two opposite processes that occur simultaneously. On the one hand, the exterior of the building has suffered very few variations, and those that have occurred are of little depth. On the other hand, the interior of the palace has been subjected to very different interventions, with a strong impact on its interior distributions, including the incorporation and transformation of different spaces and other elements such as elevators and stairs. Therefore, the identity of the palace is built from this double process of permanence and invariability in its external configuration, and of change and transformation in its internal arrangement.

The proposal aims to reinforce the identity of the palace by keeping its exterior practically intact, compared to the interior, where the identity of the transformation of the Palace helps to introduce the versatile spaces demanded by the Mahou Factory of experiences.