Congress Palace, Bilbao by Soriano & Palaces

During the 80′s there was a great industrial crisis in Spain. This crisis seriously affected Bilbao shutting down many of the companies working in the vicinity of their river. Faced with this situation had the chance to regain the river to the city and develop a new urban strategy for one of the most important cities of northern Spain.

This river was very polluted and degraded due to industrial action all of the yards, blast furnaces and large container storage. The action returned these old urban areas to the city to promote from it a new growth model. In these renovated spaces are built great representative works as the Guggenheim Museum, the Bridge Field Volatín Pedestrian or Euskalduna own which we will discuss below.

The Palace of Congresses and Music Euskalduna was designed by architects Federico Soriano and Dolores Palacios. The building stands on the site of the old shipyards Euskalduna (last shipyards where ships were built in Bilbao). Here, the palace is projected as a giant old ship in perpetual construction, anchored in the river with a rusted due to step outside of time. And within it establishes the program’s audience.

However, the building is rather more complex than this simple idea. First, the palace is not intended to be ship shape, but have the seeds of its shape. This uses concepts and techniques of engineering (especially naval) who had not previously been practiced in architecture. This leads not to imitate other forms and to investigate the processes of construction of ships dragging these techniques to the project.

On the other hand, the building formally adapts to the urban environment very interesting. While the facade on the river is seen as building a ship in the making, its position on the city radically changes appearing as an office building of steel and glass.

Inside the building is set to establish itself as two buildings in one: Palace of Congresses or Opera Auditorium. The architects claimed that according to their use had a completely different look. To do this, apart from using light as a structuring element of space, worked with circulation systems around a series of interlocking halls. These systems create spaces connected to each other causing different spatial perceptions by use of the building. The soil of these lobbies is continuous terrazzo, made of cement, plate glass and synthetic resins, and synthetic parts are drawings that express the plant where the visitor stands.