Studio Banana TV interviews Pesquera-Ulargui, authors of a congress center in Ibiza.
The formal result of this first building depends largely on its relationship to the proposal as a whole, so its justification will be linked to the culmination of both buildings. In the future, each will be indebted to the other. The conference center will create its own space, comprehensible at a glance. From there, the cultural centre emerges, which in turn splits into multiple spaces, each one for an activity, each one for each person. The magnificent site where it is located, beside the sea, at the end of the bay and facing an indigenous pine forest, corresponds in its rectangular part to the future auditorium, where continuity with the urban mesh is maintained in spite of demanding its own garden; the part built now attaches to the main building and protrudes into the pine forest with the freedom of wanting to be part of the place, prolonging the conference activities to the surrounding landscape.
This first phase therefore has a close relationship to its surroundings: its fragmented volume opens onto the forest showing its different uses, it dissolves among the shade of the trees, and inserts itself into the terrain among retaining walls and the thick layer of vegetation covering it. Three elements emerge from its roof and express the rehearsal and stage spaces. A large square volume around a patio houses the rest of the program: the multi-purpose rooms, the lecture halls and the future restaurant-café.
The complex as a whole seeks to recover the symbolic character of the characteristic intermediate spaces of the island of Ibiza, to build with odds and ends, but transformed from popular to contemporary architecture. An interior which is exterior for the exhibition hall; the stonework on the edges of the landscape is turned into a stacked column base for the façade; the natural light present in the whole building, even as a stage background in some cases; and the creation of an artificial topography that transforms the area and introduces an itinerary in the building, with a new horizon line towards the forest and, though invisible, towards the sea.
Construction systems
Walls: Exposed white reinforced concrete mixed with local gray aggregate in interiors and extruded polystyrene insulation panels, all clad with local limestone on the outer facing surface.
Floorings: 8-cm thick limestone slabs, smoothed and trimmed on site, with irregular shapes and well-fit stonework bonding.
Ceilings: Exposed concrete slabs, with 1.8 meter edge beams in the upper part with mean spans of 18 meters.
Claddings: 2.20 meter acoustic baseboard (variable height in the assembly hall) composed of a pinewood frame and absorbent rockwool stained smoke black, finished with trapezoidal section oakwood slats.
