Voces del Prado

An amazing engineering project

Pedro Álvarez Moreno, Head of the Area of Works and Maintenance, 1994-2009

I learned a lot from the extension to the Museum itself and the one to the Casón. The construction system used to create the basements in the extension was from top down rather than bottom up. You normally start with the foundations and move up. Here, however, they installed the structural frames first then excavated down, then another structure and further excavating. The foundations were done later with piles.
When excavating beneath the cloister and during the entire creation of the extension there was a real sense of panic in case the Jerónimos church was damaged. So it was all constantly supervised with probes and sensors so that nothing moved a millimetre. I don’t know if you’ve seen the dramatic photographs of the extension to the Casón. It was the same there, like mining work: they had to prop up the building because the foundations were very shallow. Thousands of piles were sunk to support the building in order to dig out the basements.
That was an amazing engineering project. You learn from all these things; they’re not projects you normally encounter. That’s why I say it was a historic personal experience and an experience for the Museum and for all of us who lived through that period, I think. They were fantastic times.