News from Madrid: The developer’s panel in charge of the build­ing has decided to fire the archi­tect claim­ing delays and budget prob­lems. The comis­sion of the build­ing has been han­dled accord­ing to span­ish reg­u­la­tions via an open com­pe­ti­tion, with the result of an 80 mil­lion euro con­tract being adjudicated.

After the inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion in 2000, Navarro made it to the final and won the con­tract for design­ing the build­ing, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive the­atre com­plex in the center of madrid called Teatro Canal, a 35.000 sqm chore­og­ra­phy and dance center. It was going to be one of the most emblem­atic oeu­vres of the then pres­i­dent of the com­mu­nity Alberto Ruiz Gal­lar­don. With an over­bud­get of 25% (100M euros in total – not that much con­sid­er­ing the scale of the works) and a delay of two years, the new pres­i­dent Esper­anza Aguirre has decided to ditch Baldeweg from the direc­tion of the building.

It is an open secret that dif­fer­ences between Gal­lar­don (now mayor of Madrid) and Aguirre played a role here. So far the inter­na­tional media has not writ­ten any­thing about it (as far as I know) so the links are mostly in spanish:

The span­ish archi­tec­tural comunnity has been call­ing for sup­port to Navarro – ‘Aguirre “despide” a Navarro Baldeweg’ (edgar​gon​za​lez.com)
William J.R. Curtis in ‘El Pais’: Mae­stro de la luz
And a whole list of promi­nent artist and archi­tects is protest­ing against the deci­sion – ‘Arquitectos y artis­tas declaran la guerra a Esper­anza Aguirre’