Badajoz Conference Centre "Manuel Rojas"
Badajoz is a city of contrasts, the most populous in Extremadura. It shares a border with Portugal. The old town and administrative and commercial centre gives way to a modern city strategically situated on the banks of the Guadiana River that flows through the city from east to west before turning south, where it acts as the border with Portugal. The Manuel Rojas Conference Centre is an architectural landmark that forms part of the city’s physiognomy, in which the value of the materials can be expressed.
The Building
A living building
The Manuel Rojas Conference Centre, which opened in April 2006, is a bold venture due to its great symbolic significance: the old bullfighting arena within a pentagonal bastion of the 17th-century Vauban wall. It has a surface area of 17,519 square metres, with a principal auditorium, a secondary auditorium, an exhibition hall and several multi-use rooms. The building stands on a continuous slope due to the terrain and the wall, which allowed architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano to play with the volume, the space, the terrain and the light.
At the New York MOMA
A true re flection of the new Spanish architecture, the authors of the project opted for a more sculptural than architectural piece. In 2006 the Badajoz Conference and Exhibition Centre was chosen by New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) as one of the 53 most representative buildings in Spain of the past three decades. The building exterior features the “Eclíptica” sculpture by Blanca Muñoz; constructed in stainless steel, it pays tribute to the victims of the Civil War, and every 14 August, the anniversary of the fall of the city, the sun draws the figure of a flower on the ground in memory of those who died.
