Seville Congress Centre - Sevilla, Spain, 2014

Architects: Guillermo Vazquez Consuegra. Architect 
Client: Ayuntamiento de Sevilla
Contractor: UTE FIBES: Heliopol, Inabensa y Acciona
Photographer: Duccio Malagamba

Built over twenty years ago by Antonio SaÅLseta, the Sevillian FIBES Congress and Exhibition mCenter needed a new auditorium for larger events and also to enlarge its exhibition area. The extension project, which adds 35,000 square meters to the existing 55,000 of the original center, proposes a new freestanding building, but linked to the first venue. The proposal tries to address the particular needs of the place and its environment – the existing building, the expansion, the road dividing both plots, the railway tracks, the suburban dimension of the terrain and the architecture in the city –, bringing together all the conflicting elements without reflecting that conflictive situation. The initial project, the winning proposal of a competition held in 2003, took up three plots adjacent to the original complex. The one that has been finally built has an L-shaped floor plan; one of the arms lies parallel to the third of the existing pavilions, and the other takes up the new plot.

The project hence has two large articulated pieces: a horizontal platform hovering over the terrain and thus allowing car circulation below, and a second piece that rises along a gentle slope all the way up to the platform. The sloping piece, resting on the existing building, generates an outdoor covered space; an atrium and anteroom that becomes a transitional space between the Congress Center and the street. This space of access rises gently towards the lobby, located on the platform that accommodates the different elements of the program. The road separating both plots and leading to the parking areas runs below the lobby. 

The program includes an auditorium with capacity for 3,500 people, catering and restaurant areas, as well as multipurpose and administration zones. These spaces configure a stratified, permeable and transparent structure that harbors a free-flowing and continuous space, traversed by footbridges, ramps and staircases, and in which the interior garden plays an active role organizing the space, making circulations clear for visitors and guiding users throughout the building. The auditorium also enjoys the presence of the vegetation within the building, which determines the asymmetrical organization of the hall and makes the silvery interiors vibrate with the sparkles of natural light, filtered through metallic screens.