Preliminary project for the Museum of Modern Art, which is supposed to be located in Madrid.

Gaceta de Madrid nº 2, 2 January 1933.

"Hon. Mr.: Having regard to the minutes of the Jury of the National Architecture Competition of the current year, dated 2 December 1933, made up of Mr. Francisco Javier Sánchez Cantón, President, and the members Mr. Ricardo Gutiérrez Abascal, Mr. Martín Domínguez Esteban, Mr. Jesús Morti Martin and Mr. José María Muguruza Otaño: It turns out that in the aforementioned minutes the Jury states the following:

(...) The Jury spends several days carefully examining all the works, establishing in advance the criteria that must preside in the judgement, which can be summarised as follows: As this is a pre-project competition, the Jury considers the correct approach to the problem to be more important than the detail of the solution given to it. In calculating the surface area and linear development measures, account was taken not only of the fact that it is a question of judging preliminary projects, but also of the freedom that the rules leave to the competitors in this respect. In establishing the rules according to which the works were examined, the jury's attention was focused on those that affect the part of the museum most directly related to the public, following a functional criterion and giving them more importance than those that refer to the administrative part, services, workshops, etc.

Nor has the location of the site been taken into account, since the rules do not indicate this as a selective value and this is not a competition whose object was the choice of a project to be carried out. The problems considered to be fundamental in a museum of this type, and whose solution has been examined in the preliminary projects presented, have been those of circulation, lighting, flexibility and the distribution of the number of floors, with greater importance being given to the first three and more attention being paid to the solution of these problems as a whole than to the perfect solution of any one of them in particular.

The Jury regrets that the rigidity established by the first base has not allowed it to award prizes in a way that, in its opinion, would express more accurately the merits it appreciates in the pre-projects judged. It also wishes to detail the objections which, in accordance with the above-mentioned criteria, can be raised against the various preliminary drafts, (...)

Number 2. Disproportion between the area occupied by the vestibules and accesses and the part usable for installation, which is too far away from the entrance. The U-shaped plan establishes long circulations; the central corridor of the two branches of the U seems inefficient, as it does not communicate directly with the Painting Rooms, but rather responds to structural needs. Access to the garden is not very easy from the Museum premises. Due to the structure and orientation adopted, the lighting system loses much of its effectiveness because of the shadows cast by the elevated parts of the building, the influence of the colour of the brick walls on the light in the rooms, and the violent variation in lighting conditions due to the movement of the sun in the middle of the day. Low flexibility as a result of the structure and the unique lighting system adopted. (...)

Number 6. 1 rest room affected by the transition to the Sculpture and Prints Rooms. Access to the garden too indirect. Poorly located fire service. Entrance to the toilets directly from the rest room. Two thirds of the painting rooms with zenithal light (...)

Number 12. Insufficient lobby with lack of clarity in circulations. Excessive step length. Faulty layout of the Conference Room and Library. One of the sculpture rooms, with inadequate lighting. Overhead lighting is applied too rigidly in almost all the rooms of the museum, which is spread over two floors. (...)

This Ministry has approved this proposal and has decided as follows:

1. That the prize of 15,000 pesetas be awarded to the author of project number 6, Mr Fernando Garela Siercadal.

2. That the two runners-up prizes of 1,000 pesetas each be awarded to the authors of projects number 12 and number 2, Mr Manuel Martinez Chumillas and Mr Luis Moya Blanco, respectively.

3. That by the Authorising Officer of this Ministry the said amount be firmly released against the Central Treasury, in favour of the authorised person Mr. Rufino González Povedano, for payment to the aforementioned gentlemen, and charged to chapter 21, single article, corteepin 2. of the current budget of this Ministry.

I am communicating this to you for your information and use.

Madrid, 2 December 1933.

C. BOLIVAR PIELTAIN

Mr. Rector of Fine Arts."