Plasencia Auditorium and Congress Centre 

SelgasCano

The site is on the edge of town, on the boundary between the city and countryside, between what is sadly artificial and what is natural. The Extremadura countryside, regarded in this part of the world as the local equivalent of the sea.

During the competition, we reached the conclusion that there was a choice, between belonging to the city &mdashartificial&mdash, and belonging to the natural. We could not have it both ways and, as usual, we opted for the latter, following an obsessive impulse of ours in that direction. This forced us to insert the building at a point that was much lower than street level due to the considerable height difference between one world and the other. The artificial world was so aggressive that it had created a 17-meter height difference without the slightest regard for the natural contour that is buried underneath. Conversely, and in reaction to a seemingly unstoppable steamroller, in our proposal we decided to fully respect the land on which the building stands by occupying the smallest possible footprint. We believed that this building, the most important construction to be built in Plasencia this century, should rise to the occasion and preserve an island of natural land in the future expansion zone, although it might eventually end up as a small puddle in the existing sea, without any possible company. Only in our dreams is there a slight load discharge, transmitted to the rest of the context&mdash the rest of the components coming behind, which are obliged to beach themselves like ships, respecting this insinuated sea.