11/10/2017
Palacio de Congresos de Peñíscola (Peñíscola Conference Centre), Castellón
The Conference Centre's location, at the foot of Peñíscola Castle and facing a garden very close to the Mediterranean, played a considerable part in defining the concept.
The desire to link the interior spaces to the park and the view of the sea from the upper storey led to an image which is continuous and closed along the bordering streets and fragmented and open on the façade giving entrance from the garden, freeing space for a large square and bringing the future park right up to the building's doors.
A shade house, the transition between the park and the interior, is the architectural feature that materialises both this accord and the image of the Conference Centre. It is a three-dimensional structure made of ceramic pieces. This screenwall glides between the white concrete forms, simultaneously interior and exterior, permeable to the air but giving shelter from the rain. It is the building's antechamber, a meeting place prior to the foyer. The fourth façade is the roof, which is visible from the Castle. The undulating concrete slab covering the main hall is covered with zinc.
The foyer is a fluid, enveloping space that embraces the different parts of the building as autonomous components. The ground floor contains the entrance to the auditorium, the offices and the exhibition space, which is at a slightly lower level than the foyer. On the first floor, the conference rooms, press room and cafeteria are arranged around this internal void. The cafeteria opens visually onto the park and its great panoramic eye seeks the view of the sea.
The auditorium, which seats 700, is designed as a concert hall, conference hall and cinema on a single, continuous, gently sloping plane. The ceiling is an undulating slab of exposed concrete. The acoustics requirements are built into its structure. The walls are covered with southern yellow pine slats, covering the lateral technical galleries and providing a vertical counterpoint to the bare white concrete ceiling.
As well as the exposed white structural concrete and the pine linings, the interior has grey slate on the floors and drawn metal on the ceilings, which conceal the strip lighting and service installations.
CERAMICS:
The ceramic shade house returns to the three-dimensional ceramic forms used in traditional architecture and by the 20th century Modern Movement, which have since fallen into disuse.
Placed at the entrance to the Conference Centre, on the principles of a large installation, it recaptures the character that ceramic screenwalls have always possessed: an open space pierced by light and air, a transitional space that is cool and shady in the daytime and magical at night.
400 pieces in total, each measuring 100x40x40 cm and weighing around 80 Kg, were manufactured in high temperature stoneware with a natural seggar clay texture(more were made, in fact, as the process of researching their moulding and firing was more arduous than expected).
Unsuspected problems appeared. The major factories would not take time off their lucrative production chains to embark on a line of research with an unknown outcome, so the pieces were hand-made by Valencian craftsmen who had even more doubts and queries than ourselves. The first pieces made by modern firing methods buckled more than the tolerance and the high moisture content loss required made it necessary to employ gradual firing, like that of old-fashioned kilns.
Just as we had done to find the potters, we had to go and search for the kilns. All this went against the grain for the efficient, incredulous contractors and flew in the face of the usual industrial procedures and schedules. The pieces were tested by modern quality control methods, of course, and the result was that they were surprisingly resistant both when dry and when wet.
Firing at a not very high temperature produced the natural tone we chose for the fired pieces, which were installed at the entrance to the Conference Centre by fixing them to a light metal structure of gauged bars and plates.
