A Tennis Taj Mahal

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Today, the Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open, a new event on the calendar of both tours, begins in Spain. Fans of the world's best men's player and the entire Spanish Armada are sure to see such an event as long overdue.

Christopher Clarey writes the following article for the New York Times about the grand stadium which will feature the marquee matches.

Centre Court at Wimbledon, Roland Garros Stadium in Paris, the Foro Italico in Rome and Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York now have company in Spain.

It is time to add La Caja Mágica to the grand tour of tennis showplaces. It is the new, avant-garde home of the combined men’s and women’s event in Madrid and an architectural achievement. It features three main courts with retractable roofs, all in the same arena, and it is a shape-shifting statement of the Spanish capital’s ambition to become a nexus for international sport.

“A tennis Taj Mahal,” said Ion Tiriac, the owner of the Madrid tournament.

La Caja Mágica is Spanish for the Magic Box, although the origins of the nickname for the main arena in the Manzanares Park Tennis Center are actually French. The architect Dominique Perrault used the term “La Boîte Magique” to headline his successful proposal for the tennis complex.

“It’s a box that transforms itself constantly: closed, open or illuminated,” Perrault said in a telephone interview last week.

The box’s three adjustable roofs are its signature feature, giving Madrid instant bragging rights over any other tennis tournament. Melbourne Park, home of the Australian Open, has two stadiums with retractable roofs. Wimbledon, no longer seeing anything quaint in rain delays, is about to inaugurate a translucent, retractable roof over its venerable Centre Court.

But the roofs at the Caja Mágica, which can open or close in 20 minutes, are a step beyond, in that they are all independent elements of the same structure and, unlike Melbourne’s roofs, they do not simply slide. They also are configured to be lifted like the lid of a box, which can make the top resemble kinetic sculpture.

“We can be 100 percent outdoors, and in that case, the roof slides,” Perrault said. “And then there are these intermediate positions which are very comfortable and which give the feeling of being outdoors but also protect the courts from the wind.

“The box is also not constructed with walls. It’s constructed with a metal casing that acts like a big curtain that lets the air pass through but stops the sun and the wind and also the rain. At night, the box is a magic lantern. The light comes from the interior of the building, and then, at that moment, it lights up the entire curtain and the facade disappears, and we see the structures of the stadium inside.”

The stadium court seats approximately 12,500 and has been named for the tournament director and former Spanish men’s champion Manuel Santana, known as Manolo. The second court seats approximately 5,000 and has been named for the former Spanish women’s champion Arantxa Sánchez Vicario. The third seats 3,000 and might already be named for Rafael Nadal if he were not still in his prime.

There are also four other match courts outside as part of the larger complex, with La Caja Mágica linked to the surrounding neighborhoods by a pedestrian pathway.

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Talk about foresight. It looks beautiful, it sounds even better, and such a grand piece of architecture is appropriate for the first joint masters level event on the red stuff.

(Thanks, Graf_Sampras)