Madrid

Madrid, 2010. The city at the peak of its expansion and at its first major halt.

These are the years of the PAUs – the Programas de Actuación Urbanística – Sanchinarro, Las Tablas, Vallecas, Vicálvaro: kilometres of new housing blocks, six-lane avenues, roundabouts, shopping centres. And at the centre of the new financial geography, the Cuatro Torres Business Area and the KIO Towers at Plaza Castilla.

Ferreri photographs Madrid after the burst of the bubble. Glass skyscrapers as new isolated cathedrals, mirrored and inaccessible. Around them, a suspended peripheral landscape: the Mirador Building in Sanchinarro, the long grey concrete blocks of Vallecas with a single red curtain lit, the M-40 motorways deserted at dawn, the blue office buildings reflecting other buildings, the remaining industrial sheds.

A city designed on a metropolitan scale, still empty. No people, only architecture. The monument of speculation at the moment when speculation has ended.

Part of the larger project _Metropolis_, with São Paulo and Berlin/side B.