The “Vegas Altas” Congress and Exhibition Center grows in an ambiguous peripheral location, in a land that is both urban and agricultural boundary. Occupying the first or last crop field. The architectural proposal is intended to highlight this timeless condition of building belonging to the Vega as a free-standing building, floating in the countryside like a giant bale of straw with a flat horizon, free and fertile.
On one hand, it is a building that hides its status growing underground. The program is drawn on a half-buried ring that adapts to the terrain and to the boundaries of the plot, but hides his condition hiding to visitors. On the other hand, a cubic volume rises categorically and boldness. The only building perceived above ground, appropriate for both the visibility and the representativity required and also to solve the various usage needs, home to the large volume needed to absorb the magnitude of a stage box. The building has a main auditorium with capacity for 800 spectators and a secondary hall for 275 spectators. They can be used either at the same time or independently, flexibly adapted to the expected attendance and the nature of the event. The main room with stage area and orchestra shell allows their use as concert hall, theater, congresses and conferences or projections. The secondary auditory, without scenic box but with music shell enables it for its use as chamber music hall, theater and lectures.
Thus, reinforces its urban character, iconic, with a platonic geometry of a perfect cube, but in turn loses its built character as it is a field sown of strips of vegetation and its surface is ripped with skylights that lights the underground spaces. The building gives ample public green space to the town with a green cover over most of the program and exhibition halls. The proposal extends like a large park and a square with a sloped ground serving both to create an access to the building and to perform as a outdoor auditorium for alternative activities.
On one hand, it is introverted, hidden and neutral in its earthy materiality, offering a garden that is the real main facade of the building. Alternate large trees with herbaceous straw-consistency plantation with low need for land and water. It facilitates its growing on the deck irrigated by water from the basement of the auditorium itself. At the same time it is outgoing, as it seeks both to see from the roof terraces as to be seen wrapped in a woven web of ropes. In the different floors of the cube stands the ticket offices, different accesses for both artists and the general public, administration, rehearsal rooms and a restaurant located on the top floor, a vantage way to becoming a place to become a city reference. It is intended that the cube accommodate the uses capable of being used with a different schedule than the rest of the building, taking advantage of their independence to multiply its programmatic flexibility.
On one hand, opens a crack around a ramp access square. Furthermore, a large lattice rises. The entrance hall is a polyvalent space in fluid connection with the outside. Its layout can be used for multiple purposes, such as temporary exhibition hall, holding receptions and closure conferences, congresses and small conferences. In this lobby you could have up to three conference rooms with folding intermediate size acoustic curtains closed. The pillars supporting the roof of this architectural exhibition space can function as support for exhibitions, transforming its structure in furniture. Here are located the public toilets, the ambigu, information, wardrobe and other services to the auditoriums. An expanded liquid and continuous public space with the auditoriums at its ends, which bind on the opposite side by the area of services and facilities serving backstage, divided into three levels closing a ring under the ground and serving both auditoriums. On the one hand, has a high thermal inertia through the concrete walls and green cover to maintain a constant comfortable temperature in winter and summer. On the other hand, is a large shade-structure that functions as a ventilation tower.
In part, the soil of the cover is mimetic with the arid natural environment sere for months. However, its underground and watery interior is defined by a more artificial freshness. The entire tour around the exhibition space is accompanied by a white, tense and warped mirror sheet of fiberglass and silicone, which extends the space reflecting a unreal environment. Auditoriums are made with green color polycarbonate that by the effect of indirect lighting becomes a water world without a precise dimension. The walls, without quartering fit its geometry naturally, while the roof of diamond pieces and op-art texture alternates mirror surface with backlit transparencies.
On either side, there is a material ambiguity in the general configuration of the building, in the tone of the concrete that is the same of the surrounding land, in the colors of vegetation transferred to the threads that make up the ropes of the facades and the watery nature of the interior finishes. There is also a fluctuating atmosphere where spaces change its character from daylight to night, changing from east to west, from natural to artificial.
The Congress and Exhibition Center “Vegas Altas” adheres to the climatic conditions of the environment without losing sight of its economy. Brought with low power consumption and easy maintenance. The rivalry to attract cultural events and activities is based on a combination of its iconic potential and the best program of services that can offer flexible spaces and adjusted in size. The performance adapts effectively to the austerity of the current economic moment thanks to an enthusiastic and imaginative track, with special attention to construction to meet the tight consistency with existing budget and the needs of the extensive requested starting process. It is a silent object that aims to go unnoticed, but at the same time lights to be visible on the horizon, a lighthouse in the sea of the Extremadura’s field.
CONGRESS CENTER AND AUDITORIUM “VEGAS ALTAS”. VILLANUEVA DE LA SERENA. BADAJOZ. 2008-2014
Competition. First price.
Architects:
Luis Pancorbo (Madrid 1969), José de Villar (Madrid 1976), Carlos Chacón (Madrid 1977), Inés Martín Robles (Salamanca 1976).
Quality surveyors: Manuel Trenado, José Luis Gomez (adobearquitectura)
Structural engineering: Juan Rey, Pablo Vegas, Jacinto Ruiz Carmona (Mecanismo)
Facilities Engineering: Rafael Úrculo, Sergio Rodríguez (Úrculo Ingenieros)
Acustics: Higini Arau (Arau Acustics)
Models: Gilberto Ruiz
Construction Company: Placonsa ( Eloy Montero, Julio Oreja, Site Manager)
Execution budget. PEM: 10.505.187,20 euros
competition: 2008
Start of construction: January 2010
Finish of construction: september 2014
MANUFACTURERS + INSTALLATION
Concrete: OH
Concrete colorant: SERRA CIMENT
Steelwork:TALLERES BACCA, CELASA SL
Plasterboard: TABICOEX
Glass:TVITEC
Ropes: COTESI + LASTRA y ZORRILLA
Glass fiber with silicone membrane: NEWMAT + AINSIS
Policarbonate: POLIMERTECNIC
Continuos flooring: ALCHEMICA + POLITAY
Wooden flooring: CARPINTERIA DE MADERA VIA DE LA PLATA.
Plumbing: FONCAL
Sanitary ware: DURAVIT, FLAMINIA
Clima installations: AIRLAND. GESTION SAUTER. TOBERAS TROX. + GARCIA BARATA.
Electricity installations: ELECTRICIDAD CANDELA Y VALLEL
Led illumination: INDULAMP ENERGY S.L
Lighting: VIABIZZUNO, SANMODE Y AIRFAL
Emergency lights: DAISALUX
Elevators: ZENER
Fire resistant doors: DEMESEL
Panic bars: TESA
Fire and security installations: INGESAL
Gardening: DIJARDIN
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