The Caleido Tower in Madrid will occupy a very special place in the health, university and commercial sectors, becoming a unique claim in the capital.
The buildings mark a before and after in the life of a city. They develop it, modify it, complete it, or define it, but, for the sake of truth, it must be clarified that few properties meet several of these expectations at the same time. Thus, it is a luxury for Madrid to have one of them. It is currently in the execution phase, and will undoubtedly be a reference for humanistic development, urban modification, social complement, and definition of the capital’s skyline. We are talking about the Caleido Tower.
The new Tower or Caleido Space in Madrid
The promoter of the skyscraper is the Villar Mir Group, the same that contributed to the Madrid skyline the Espacio Tower, which together with the Cepsa Tower, the Crystal Tower and the PwC Tower, the CTBA, Cuatro Torres Business Area, the center of highest business in Spain and probably in the European Union.
The new building is being executed right next to the four towers, but although its height of 181 meters will not reach the 229 meters of the Espacio Tower, the lowest of the four, it is still an impressive construction that, in addition, is provides the most advanced technology of our era.
A space for Quirón Salud and IE University
The skyscraper is shaped like an inverted T. At the bottom it has a podium of about 14,437 square meters intended for commercial use. All this, within a plot of 33,225 square meters.
Inside, the tower will house a state-of-the-art sports medicine center of Quirón Salud with a surface area of 12,226 square meters. An incredible space that falls short if we compare it with the 59,528 square meters of surface of IE University. There, some 6,000 students and 500 professors will forge their future on the first vertical campus in Europe.
Shopping areas and a large park around
The location of the building allows it to stand out from its peers, and boast of a huge park around it. In total 33,647 square meters of green and clean air. A true lung for this area that, in addition, completes the use of the land, which had been left for years without being able to define itself.
This construction adds 1,250 parking spaces, and proposes to be a new leisure and recreation area for locals and their visitors.
But, who is behind the design of this beautiful tower? Well, believe it or not, we have already seen in The Luxonomist another of the works that its designers have added to the architecture. The studio is called Fenwick Iribarren architects, and we fell in love with their work when we discovered their removable stadium in Qatar… Do you remember? A stadium for the 2022 World Cup built with containers. This really is taking sustainability one step further.
The Fenwick Iribarren architects studio is the author of the Caleido tower
From the studio, the architect director Mark Fenwick tells us that “Espacio Caleido is inspired by an architecture that takes as a reference landmark buildings in height, such as the Seagram building in New York or the Hancock building in Chicago. The objective of Torre Caleido is not to compete in height with the rest of the four towers, but in elegance and slenderness ”.
According to this, the rectangular plan has a short side of only 16 meters, allowing a very robust front view, and an exquisite thin side view. A modern educational-health monolith.
A sculptural-looking tower, like a great monument
In fact, the creators emphasize this monolithic condition, claiming that its proportions and design give the building a sculptural appearance, a monument that can be visited, an instrument to enhance knowledge, health and social integration in Madrid.
The fact is that Caleido, a word derived from the Greek meaning «of beautiful appearance» or «of good appearance«, can perfectly refer to the elegant proportions of the building. And it is that each meter of width corresponds to four in depth and nine in height.
A complex construction with two large cranes
The beautiful structure is raised by two lateral reinforced concrete towers, which allow mezzanines, so many as to raise the building to 38 stories high.
or the execution, the Liebherr Cranes company provided two EC-B cranes, capable of reaching the necessary height to lift the materials required for the construction. Without these cranes, the task of constructing large buildings would be inhumane. If we look closely, whenever there are two cranes nearby. Its “feathers” are arranged at different heights, to avoid accidental collisions, since safety is one of the basic issues in any construction.
Sustainability, a key point of the Caleido tower
Academic and hospital use suppose a more robust structural calculation, since a greater influx of people is foreseeable, and a greater movement of these within the property. In the same way, these uses also define another key factor in any building: energy efficiency.
The tower has two layers of glass spaced 25 centimeters apart, allowing natural air circulation, which is connected to the building’s air extraction. In addition, the solar control applied to the crystals helps regulate heat, gratifying winter with heat and avoiding excess heat in summer.
A privileged space in the heart of Madrid
The tower saves two well differentiated levels: the one that comes from the Castellana and the one from the Avenida Monforte de Lemos, this provides two squares to the left and right of the building. On the one hand the north, which simulates the markets of northern Europe, with a varied selection of commercial buildings of different fractures. An aesthetic wealth that results in a variety of gastronomic, restaurant and leisure products. And, on the other hand, the south square, free and multiform, prepared for the celebration of shows and social events. A square «Italian« for the enjoyment of young and old.
The Caleido tower unites the emotional with the physical
In every construction there are two factors that end up coming together. First the physical, such as the conformation of a volume, thanks to the 80,000 cubic meters of concrete, the more than 3,000 meters of corrugated steel, and the more than nine million kilograms of steel weight used.
And, secondly, the emotional one, which leads you to enjoy the colorful space enclosed by the construction, like the cinema located in its commercial space. It will have 1,258 square meters of surface in six rooms, which can be enjoyed by up to 440 spectators. By the way, the operator will be Ocine.
Of course, if I were from Madrid, or resided there, my heart would be divided between the illusion of being able to enjoy tremendous urban space, or the expectations that a sixth tower could generate.