Alberto Campo Baeza

On 24 November 2025, the new Library of the French Lycée in Madrid was inaugurated.

The event was very cordial and, in addition to the speeches given by the protagonists, starting with the Director, Gilles Martinez, the French Ambassador and the Head of the AEFE Real Estate Service, the performance by the Choir, enthusiastically conducted by Adriana Tanus, was particularly beautiful.

The Library is part of a complex of buildings that, following a public competition, was won by architect Alberto Campo Baeza and French architect Fabienne Louyot in 2018.
From the outside, the volume of the Library completes the entrance courtyard, the cour d’honneur, in the simplest way possible. The courtyard is now well formed between four buildings.
The façades are finished in the same way as the rest of the existing building, in exposed concrete of the same colour.

On the ground floor, there is a large transparent space that provides excellent access and functions as a small reading room connected to the square and the garden.
The large, flexible and bright reading room is located on the first floor. It has a double height and a translucent glass façade to the north that bends at the corners, giving this space a very special luminosity. A skylight opens up in the north-east corner, forming a trihedron. A true trihedron of light that gives character to this room. The result is one of great beauty.
The effective performance of the construction company, Clásica Urbana, is noteworthy because it is unusual. Javier Marchesi, Encarnación Obispo and Jorge Riocerezo were key players in this operation.

Odile Hagenmuller, head of the AEFE’s real estate department, Annick Bouvier, the first director of the Lycée, together with her successors, Guillaume Stengel, Serge Rodrigues and Gilles Martinez; Marc Guillen, secretary general; Clotilde Chavy, Iñigo Senard, the French architect responsible for the operation, with the help of Cyprien Xardel, and Marietta Herencias in the legal department, were valuable collaborators on behalf of the Lycée Français.

Andrés Rubio in Structures, Francisco Melchor as quantity surveyor and his collaborator Juan Carlos Cano, Rafael Úrculo with Enrique Sánchez Molina and Rosa Santos in Facilities, have contributed in an unbeatable way to getting this building up and running. Ignacio Aguirre, Alejandro Cervilla, Alfonso Guajardo and Tommaso Campiotti knew how to carry out the work with the utmost perfection.

Alberto Campo Baeza