Ayamonte Exhibition and Congress Centre

Ayamonte is a border city bounded by two large bodies of water. To the west is the mouth of the Guadiana, a great territorial reference for the town and natural border with Portugal; to the southeast the marshes and salt flats, an extensive, changing and horizontal landscape ignored until recently due to the railway belt dismantled in the 1990s. The Congress Center is located on these lands rediscovered by the city.

The demanded program (an auditorium with 1,000 seats, two with 300 and 150, areas for congressmen and exhibitions...) could be measured on two scales: on the one hand, a cross-border and territorial scale, where the Center would function in a unitary way as a large space for congresses, we would arrive by car or bus, from an airport or another city. On the other hand, there would be a local scale: concerts in a room, a conference, traveling exhibitions..., which would require a fragmented use of the building, which would be reached on foot or by bicycle from some point in the town.

The project proposes to attend to the landscape value of the rediscovered marshland and to the unitary and fragmented double reading of the program through a large public space located inside the building. A raised and covered platform that culminates the fabric of squares and promenades that structure the river route of Ayamonte, from the Guadiana to the marshes, crosses the building, creating a void from which to view the landscape of salt flats. Like a large room open to the territory, this space dissolves the limits between the public and the private, proposing a collective place to meet protected by architecture, around it are arranged the exhibition spaces and the three large rooms, which project their roof sheltering the interior square. The interior void unites and separates at the same time, allowing the unitary and fragmented use sought. From the city, access via a generous ramp raises the level of access to the halls, hiding the great void and allowing the landscape to be seen from this versatile high plan, also avoiding further conflicts with the water table; while towards the territory, the wide landscape of marshes presses the building that is hollowed out to attend to this extensive and territorial scale.

Two large concrete acoustic halls house the large auditorium on one side of the square, and the rooms for 300 and 150 people on the other, both are joined below by the raised platform that houses the dressing rooms, pits, warehouses and the exhibition space below. On the first floor, a volume on the access ramp where the conference rooms are arranged joins the rooms again at this level, seeking a circular path. Lastly, the large-span roof that covers the auditoriums extends over the square, protecting it like a floating canopy. The complex is covered by a series of prefabricated panels of textured white concrete with vertical grooves that vibrate under the Ayamonte sun.