Red Bull Music Academy / Nave de Música Matadero Madrid

The Red Bull Music Academy (RBMA) is a nomadic anual music festival. The 2011 edition of RBMA was going to be held in Tokyo, but given the devastating effects of the earthquake, the location had to be changed. With only two months to build, the city of Madrid took over. The creative space known as Matadero Madrid, which is located in an early 20thcentury industrial warehouse complex, was designated as the event's new location. The RBMA at Matadero Madrid launched the programming for the new Nave de Música, a space specifically dedicated to audio creation and research. The construction project was approached as a temporary structure based on the criteria of adaptability and reversibility that would make it easy to completely or partially reconfigure over time. Under these circumstances and in an emergency situation, the work began on an infrastructure capable of meeting the precise technical and acoustic needs of the event, in addition to accelerating, promoting and enriching a series of extremely intense artistic encounters that would take place between the participating musicians. At the same time, an environment was added that would record and archive everything taking place. The proposal was developed following five guidelines: deadlines and budget, preservation of the warehouse, programme requirements, acoustics, and temporariness. As a result, the project unfolded in the warehouse's interior in the form of a fragmented urban structure in which the variable relationship between proximity and independence, and preexistence and performance, could offer unexpected stages to its community of inhabitants.