Madrid, october 29th, 2012.

Smart Business puts into operation the meeting rooms and auditorium of the new headquarters of the Botín Foundation in Madrid.

An old industrial building located in the heart of Madrid’s Salamanca district houses the new headquarters of the Botín Foundation in Madrid. It is a listed building, built in 1920 by Gonzalo Aguado, which was a silver factory for decades and, in recent years, rehabilitated by Enrique Bardají, hosted the Madrid branch of the Vinçon design and decoration store.

The objective of the project for the Botín Foundation, carried out by MVN arquitectos in collaboration with the interior designer Juan Luis Líbano, has been to recover the uniqueness of the original warehouse, achieving a space that maintains the essence of its industrial character. The ground floor houses the activities for the public, and is configured as a diaphanous, modular and flexible auditorium. The first floor functions as the management area of the foundation, with a differentiated area for meetings and a spacious and bright open space under the original structure.

Smart Business was the company chosen to provide a technological and audiovisual solution for the auditorium and meeting rooms. According to the characteristics of the event, the auditorium can be configured as individual rooms, or as different auditoriums. All acoustics, microphones and visual signals are easily adapted to the chosen configuration thanks to a touch screen. An additional requirement on the part of the architecture was the delicate aesthetic treatment of the project. Speakers, projection screens and elevators that are not in use are completely hidden, without sacrificing at any time the audiovisual quality that is required in this type of room.

Thanks to a simple graphical interface, all the complexity of the equipment is hidden from the user, since the control system has been conceived for use by administrative personnel, not by audiovisual experts.

The Botín Foundation is the first private foundation in Spain by volume of social investment. Its Chairman is Emilio Botín, also Chairman of Banco Santander.