Museo Sorolla opens former Volvo workshop extension in Madrid on Thursday, 15 October

A former car workshop becomes the entrance

The Museo Sorolla opens a new extension at 68 Zurbano Street in Madrid's Chamberí district on Thursday, 15 October. The 2,050 square metre building sits beneath six floors of flats and was once a Volvo repair workshop and dealership that had been abandoned. In 2009 the Ministry of Culture bought a first-floor premises for 5.4 million euros, alongside a ground-floor commercial space, and El Periódico reports that the ministry bought two adjoining premises that year. Services that had been run in makeshift conditions are being moved into the new building. The museum closed for two years for works and returns to visitors only partially, since the Sorolla house on the Paseo del General Martínez Campos is still undergoing rehabilitation. ABC noted that Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun did not attend the press presentation held on 14 October.

Two phases and a 13 million euro investment

ABC describes the opening as the first of two phases of a project won by the studio Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, led by Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano, in a competition the ministry called in 2016. El Periódico reports that Enrique Varela, director of the Sorolla, described how the house has changed over time.

The house has gone through various transformations over the 20th century. It has always adapted to what the museum needed.

Varela also said the project lets the museum move services that had been run in precarious conditions into the building and recover historic spaces of the house for visitors. The total investment is 13,104,692 euros, covering the purchase of the premises, the works and the equipment. ABC puts the works at 6.7 million euros and the equipment at 933,410 euros.

An exhibition that traces the house from 1905

The exhibition 'Tras la casa del artista. Arquitecturas del Museo Sorolla (1905-2026)' follows the building chronologically, starting in 1905, when Joaquín Sorolla bought the plot and began planning his house and studio with the architect Enrique María Repullés. Drawings, plans and letters show how the painter made decisions even when he was away from Madrid and received updates from collaborators by post. The route follows a studio window about four by three metres that Sorolla pushed to open, and that was bricked up in 1930 under a closure designed by the architect Flórez. The last room shows the window through documents and images. Curator Covadonga Blasco put the aim of the show plainly.

What we want is for visitors to start seeing this extension as part of the house, and not as something foreign to it.

Why the house outgrew its museum role

Sorolla designed the house to live and work in, and the museum was constituted in 1931 and opened to the public in 1932. Bedrooms later became galleries and offices, and successive reforms never removed the limits of a house built for living rather than for receiving visitors. Temporary exhibitions were squeezed into former family rooms that were too small and divided, and the museum lacked a restoration workshop and a loading bay for moving works without disturbing visitors. Collections were scattered across different corners, and some rooms had no adequate climate control. Blasco stressed that conservation of the house's essence and authenticity should take priority in this kind of museum. She also described architecture as a living thing that needs changes like this extension.

Architecture is understood as an organism that has to be kept alive and needs this kind of extension and modification.