The refurbishment of Matadero is one of the most ambitious cultural projects launched in the city over the last years. Converted into a contemporary art center, it develops a stable activity since 2007. Its comprehensive program and varied activities, encompassing different fields, has turned Matadero Madrid into one of the most active centers in the cultural map of the city. Another key to its success was its existing infrastructure, the old municipal slaughterhouse, which is being renovated in different phases, without encumbering the activities under way in the already refurbished areas.

The construction of slaughterhouses and livestock markets in Madrid between 1911 and 1925, following a project by the municipal architect Luis Bellido (1869-1955) and engineer Eugenio Rivera, on the old Arganzuela meadow along the Manzanares River, is a landmark of Madrid architecture characterized by its functionality, constructive rationality and conceptual simplicity. For over sixty years it was the city’s main supplier, and during all this time it proved its capacity to adjust to changing needs. As for the Neomudejar of its facades, this style adapted to a prevailing taste that was not yet ready to embrace the first modern tests explored in similar industrial buildings in Germany, Holland or France. Surrounded by a perimeter wall measuring 2.5 kilometers long and an area of 165,415 square meters, the compound was closed down in 1996, and at that time it included 48 buildings of different uses.

The project to convert this space into a creative laboratory, promoted by the Madrid City Council in 2003, involved recovering and refurbishing the existing buildings, respecting the spatial and structural organization of the warehouses, and complementing them with a reversible architecture in tune with the industrial character of the complex. Founded on these principles, the project has delivered several noteworthy interventions, in most cases by young architects: Intermediae (resource center), El taller (The Workshop), Cineteca (Film Library), Archivo de Creadores (Creators’ Archive), Nave 16, Central de Instalaciones (Services Center), Red Bull Music Academy, Escaravox and Casa del Lector (Reader’s House). These and other interventions have turned this compound located at one of the ends of the Manzanares River Park into an attraction site for Madrid citizens and tourists alike.