A futuristic design and a glazed ceramic water drop-shaped cover inspired by Sorolla’s painting, keys to the new CaixaForum Málaga, a 9,400 square meter building with disruptive overtones that will open its doors in the second half of 2026. This is how it will be This facility is intended to expand the already generous cultural and museum offering that the city currently has. Mystery solved.
The details of the project, led by the Barcelona studio Pich Architects, were presented this Thursday in Malaga in a hand meeting between the president of the La Caixa Foundation, Isidro Fainé, the deputy general director of the institution, Elisa Durán, the mayor Francisco de la Torre, and the architect Felipe Pich-Aguilera.
Fainé has advanced that the future CaixaForum, whose works will begin this year and which will require an investment of around 30 million euros, “will be the most unique in Spain” and the Foundation’s desire is for the building to become “an exceptional letter of presentation from Malaga at the entrance to the city.”
It is a cultural facility with which the entity hopes to “contribute to the strength of this city, which has the admiration of all of Spain and also the world” and which “today is the flag of modernity and cosmopolitanism, without losing its essence.” millennial”, Fainé stressed in this regard.
Located in the central Manuel Azaña square and designed to be harmoniously integrated into the landscape and generate a positive impact on the environment, the uniqueness of the building allows it to play with light and “highlight its spectacular profile and ductility, both during the day and at night.” night”, they have highlighted from Fundación La Caixa. Furthermore, it seeks to propose “the dialogue between the urban and the environmental, between reason and emotion”, something that reaches its maximum expression on the roof of the center, an architectural element that transmits fluidity and that was born with the vocation of becoming the emblem from CaixaForum Málaga.
In addition to the 30 million euros allocated to the construction of the property, the La Caixa Foundation will contribute another five million annually to organize six temporary exhibitions and more than 1,500 activities, explained the deputy director of the institution.
Following the announcement last March, the Foundation invited different Spanish architecture firms to present their proposals for the design of CaixaForum Málaga. They received nine projects “based on the fundamental requirements of functionality, urban planning – that did not require modifications that would lengthen the execution -, sustainability, relationship with the environment and image”, Durán explained, and two of them were preselected, which were “diametrically opposite regarding the image,” he commented.
In the end, and after hearing the opinion of the mayor of Malaga himself, who considered that the chosen design is “very committed to the world’s challenges in terms of sustainability” and “you will like it”, the institution opted for the one proposed by Pich Architects. .
The building will come “to improve the place and to produce a positive impact on everything that exists in the environment,” said Felipe Pich-Aguilera, for whom “the CaixaForum is a landscape, a building that produces a garden and that encourages walks.” around them” and that emphasizes that the studio has approached the project “with the maximum environmental ambition”, because “in the future all buildings will have to be made in this way, and this CaixaForum shows the way”.
