El Batel Auditorium and Congress Centre, Cartagena, Spain, Selgas ...

from the heights behind the building, is alsoof aluminium.Opaque sections of the exterior, includingthe stage house and parts of the auditorium,are screened with translucent horizontalpiping, also streaked with dyes and lit upinside. The pipes overlap in a deep, irregularsection, and are held in place with asurprisingly simple hooped clip. For thelarge terraces of the restaurant and exhibitionhall on the upper floor, this piping runshorizontally as a sun screen.Entering at the head of the linear building,visitors are slowly immersed in a world oflight, colour and reflections, drawing themmore than 100m down the main ramp towardsthe 1,500-seat auditorium, which is located15m below ground to minimise its exteriorvolume. along the way they filter around abright-red suspended ramp that ascends tothe exhibition hall, and pass orange gashes inthe backlit walls that house the informationdesk and ambigú (the intermission bar),zigzagging benches and a clear plastic bubblechair by Eero aarnio that is suspended underthe ramp (hello, Barbarella).a run of meeting rooms steps downparallel to the ramp, in a sequence endingwith a smaller auditorium seating 500. On thefloor above, the restaurant and cafeteria, withinteriors by the architects, feature anassortment of classic 1960s pedestal chairs byEero Saarinen, pierre paulin, Eero aarnioand Verner panton, arranged around thearchitects’ wire-leg tables. The wire chairs onthe terrace are by Junya ishigami. in thesespaces and the adjacent exhibition hall, longgashes in the ceilings admit natural light.The long descent to the main auditoriumEl BatelAuditorium andCongress Centre,Cartagena, Spain,Selgas Cano8‘Selgas Cano take realismand solemnity out oflow-cost tech and approachit instead as a liberatingopportunity for playfulinvention’comes to a climax in a soaring vestibule,enclosing the accessways to the two upperseating decks. a maze of suspended stairs andbalconies, crafted in nautical white-paintedsteel, face off across the narrow chasm againsta wall of orange-coloured ETFE that catchesfiery light from the evening sun. Measuring28x12m, the wall is the largest continuousETFE cushion ever made, according tostructural engineer José romo, and is uniquein its flatness, achieved by running verticaltension cables through it at regular intervals.after the hot glow of this interlude, thecool aquatic wash of the auditorium has a bigsensorial impact. Curtains inside the wallscan open to flood the space with daylight,while another EFTE clerestory over the stagetints the head of the sloping polycarbonateceiling in contrasting orange at sunset.acoustic engineer Higini arau, who alsoworked on Selgas Cano’s 2006 polycarbonatelinedauditorium in Badajoz, claims that theacoustic performance is close to perfect, with‘a response to low frequencies as good as thefinest wood’.Backstage spaces are independentlyaccessed from the exterior via a windingramp, which is covered in a colourful archingcanopy. Mechanical services, with theirlouvres and vents, are cleverly concealed here.Site furnishings include wooden decking withinexpensive outdoor lighting on ‘wilted’ stems(the curve in the post allowed for a slimmersection, explains Selgas), and breakwaterstones dredged up during the site excavation,which serve as sculptural benches.The straightforward massing and simple,ingenious detailing of Selgas Cano’s buildingbelongs to a Spanish tradition of low-techfunctional design that can be traced back toalejandro de la Sota’s work in the 1950s and’60s, and to the early minimalist work ofÁbalos and Herreros in the 1990s. lately,architects like Selgas Cano have reinvigoratedthis tradition not only with the latesttechnical innovations such as ETFE, butalso by drawing on the industries that servethe thousands of hectares of plastic-sheetgreenhouses in southern Spain. and unlikemany of their predecessors, Selgas Canotake realism and solemnity out of low-costtech − its overtones of deprivation orasceticism − and approach it instead as aliberating opportunity for playful invention.at a deeper level, Selgas Cano’sdesign defines architectural play in termsof registering light and colour planes inspace and movement. and in essence, likethe spreading plaza of El Escorial, theseabstract qualities have much to do with thewide-open, treeless plains of the archetypalSpanish landscape. The architects themselvesmake a similar point: ‘This long constructionfeeds on the heritage of its site: theimmaculate straightness of the pier edge(straight), the invariably calm sea (flat),the artificially horizontal plane of the dock(flat), and the sky as a variable backgroundto this plane (plane on plane).’7. The smaller, 500-seatauditorium glows withdeep red upholstery andpearlescent white walls8. A collection of classicarchitect-designed ‘60schairs provides seating inthe café, a long, low spacelit by clerestory glazingar | april 2012 37