Madrid

25 November 2011

The first thing I noticed in our hotel room was the pair of nightstands flanking the bed.  Each glowed blue.  A circular switch controlled the color.  Yeah, it looks cool, but it's clearly useless, and far too bright in the dark.

It's all glass and wood in here, with light switches at waist level.  There are switches all over, and they all seem to control everything, with the comic effect of the whole room going dark when one of us aims to turn on a light.

There's a sliding door in the closet that opens into the bathroom.  I can get to my clothes from either side.  That's pretty cool.

Then there's the bathroom.  A glass door separates the two sinks from the rest of the plumbing.  However, the glass is only opaque up to the middle of my nose, and the door doesn't lock.

Wait a minute.  This all seems too familiar.  I think I know who designed this building, or, at least, whose ideas have been taken.

Princeton University is putting up a new building for the neuroscientists and psychologists.  The architect is one Rafael Moneo, an award-winning designer hailing from Madrid.  He did the extension of the Prado, the art museum in the center of the city, as well as buildings at Harvard and Columbia.  Princeton has this thing where they have to get big names to do their buildings, so, enter Moneo.

A few weeks ago I was sent to view the mock-ups.  The faculty office will be done up in light-colored wood and glass, glass, glass.  Each will have a round, glass-top table with wood and metal supports.  The desk, three-sided, is done so that one of the wood slabs appears to be lying off-center on top of the others.  "That's a design element," we are told.  "It can't be changed."  (The desk I'm typing from now, by the way, is a slab of glass that appears to be lying on top of a cube of wooden drawers, with glass fronts that match the doors.  Just saying...)  Someone else in the room asks about the waist-high light switches.  We are told that it's part of the design but they'll see about moving them up.  We're shown the doorways to the student offices.  They're all glass and sliding.  The opacity stops just below my eyes.  I can stand on my toes and peer in.  The doors do not lock.  (In the hotel bathroom, I can stand in the tub and see clear to the outside windows.  A super-hot shower steams up the glass and takes care of that problem.)  In the mock-up lab, the drawers below the benches all have light wood fronts.   I like how they look.  We have a choice of three colors for wall cabinets, but I am told that the below-bench drawer style is "a design element and can't be changed."  The gray floor, apparently, will be a choice of ugly or slightly lighter ugly, but that's it.  Anyway, this hotel room is functional, so let's hope the labs are too.  Meanwhile, I can't find any direct connection on the 'net to this place and Moneo.  Maybe it's a Madrid thing, a Spanish thing.  I'm going to ask the concierge later.  This room doesn't do much to keep me from thinking about my job, but our vacation is over in two days anyway.

We went to the Palacio Real de Madrid, the Royal Palace.  Here's a view from the plaza balcony.  Inside we saw an exhibition of royal clocks (kinda cool, actually), an armory, and the royal pharmacy.  There were rows and rows of shelves with porcelain jars, each labeled with herbs and tinctures.  "Now this is organization," I said.  So much for not thinking about work.  In the area where medicines were made, Jack noticed the sink with glassware piled in it.  He said something like, "Bad technician left glassware in the sink."  I said the tech would have to get after whoever did this, and mentioned the name of the most likely perp where I work.

The streets of Madrid, while lined with imposing buildings, seem to be doing their best to look like somewhere else.  The promenade that the guide books and concierge eagerly point us to is lined with chain stores one can find in London and Manhattan.  Those that aren't chains are tacky souvenir shops selling the same sort of crap one can find in London or Barcelona, but with a different name stamp.

Spain seems to be fond of its licorice in a way that would make Americans proud.   Each of these ropes is about two feet long.

We looked up bead shops and found a couple of places that sell all matter of craft materials.  In the early evening this place was mobbed with people who couldn't possibly have been tourists.  It was like trying to get served at a crowded deli.  I bought some beads then took this picture on my way out, holding the camera above my head.

We went to the Prado museum, the city's collection of Grand Masters' artwork.  We went in at 6:30; the museum is free from 6:00-8:00.  We stayed until closing time.  The highlight for me was seeing Heironymous Bosh's The Garden of Earthly Delights, a tryptich of surreality that predates Salvador Dali by 300 years.  I was less enchanted by the overload of religious paintings.  I can only take so many Jesus-and-Marys.  I have zero tolerance for naked angels.  Zero.

Today we're headed for more museums and maybe a walk in the city's park.  I've ditched my camera for the older one, which I brought with me even though the battery door is broken.  I've stuffed some tissue in it and taped it shut.  Heavier and bigger, it takes better pictures.