Antonio Palacios Ramilo and Joaquín Otamendi

Barely 30 years-of-age, Antonio Palacios Ramilo and Joaquín Otamendi Machimbarrena won the competition to design the new headquarters of the Postal, Telegraph and Telephone services. That galvanised a creative and indeed masterful tandem which throughout fifteen years of close collaboration has forever influenced the architecture of the capital. Together they created an original language, one that dovetailed the monumentality, classicism, rationality and functionalism that is to be found both in Cibeles and in other important buildings such as the Bank of Río de la Plata (1910-1918), current headquarters of the Instituto Cervantes, or the Hospital of Maudes (1908- 1916).  The innumerable and invaluable legacy of Antonio Palacios includes, among others, the Círculo de Bellas Artes. A figure of the first order and maximum exponent of the architecture of Madrid in the first half of the 20th century, he is considered today to be a maestro for past, present and future generations.

Arquimática

Arquimática, the architecture studio created by Francisco Rodríguez Partearroyo and his associates, won the 2004 International Architecture Ideas Competition to carry out the rehabilitation of the building and to turn it into a new cultural centre.

Their most representative projects include: the remodelling of cultural centres such as Madrid's Teatro Real opera house, university facilities like the Carlos III University campus in Getafe and the Vice-Chancellor's Office at Rey Juan Carlos University in Móstoles, as well as technological buildings such as the terminal extension at Menorca Airport.