Most people who glimpse this strange glowing boulder emerging from the hilly landscape between the countryside and the walled market city of Plasencia, Spain will only do so while passing by at high speeds in a car. That?s why architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano of the firm SelgasCano ?planned it as a snapshot or a luminous form, acting as a sign for passengers by day and by night, playing at being a correspondence between sensation and reality, between the position it seems to be heading for and the position from where it will move.”
The faceted translucent exterior of the Plasencia Conference Center and Auditórium may give it an amorphous appearance from the outside, but it actually conceals a complex multi-layered floor plan full of vivid colors and dynamic spaces. The building is a contradiction in terms, appearing both organic in form and utterly alien, gleaming in all its artificiality over the rugged natural landscape. Occupying a steeply sloped plot on the side of a hill, it seems delicately balanced. Its perched position beside a retaining wall and parking lot reflects a need to impact the rocky landscape around it as little as possible ? to the point where it physically juts out at one end.
The semi-translucent ETFE panels wrapped around the conference center give it the look of an enormous lantern by night, similarly producing a skin-like effect by day as visitors access its scarlet innards. Comprised of an entrance lobby, a secondary hall for 300 g...