Cultural Center

By Francesco Pagliari - 16 December 2009

Ibiza’s multipurpose Convention, Exhibition and Cultural Centre is a huge architectural commitment for completion in two stages: the great Auditorium seating 1243, divisible when required into two independent halls, is scheduled for the second phase. The first phase has created the overall spatial distribution making available smaller multi-purpose (meeting and teaching) rooms, a hall-cum-theatre with 400 seats set in front of a stage, an ample ground-floor exhibition space, and, on the first floor, catering and other multi-purpose facilities.
Already, however, the project by architects Pesquera and Ulargui stands out for its striking architectural features: forms that allow the buildings to blend with the natural environment, and the use of local stone for elevations and flooring. The cultural centre is a symbol, a modern construction project that has adopted and modernised several popular traditional features: building in stages and an ingenious use of low-cost local materials.
The complex does more than blend with its surrounds. It has embraced local customs to resonate with the natural landscape and its climate, offering views that provide new references to the horizon beyond. In the words of Luis Martinez Santa-Maria, lecturer at Madrid Escuela Técnica Superior, “it is a technical lesson in how a natural setting can be transformed without being destroyed, how finding a solution to a problem can generate invention: by cladding the façades with “typical stone”, the new building is made to sit naturally amidst its surrounds”.
The immediate impression is of a series of stratified elevations. Horizontal stone bands separated by concrete strips form a motif linking the separate volumes. The unrendered concrete of the top band is widely used also in the interiors. The external cladding motif does not project from the wall surface rather is embedded in it, resembling the low retaining stone walls characteristic of the island’s countryside. Irregular...