PROJECT DETAILS
Francisco Mangado designs the new Palma de Mallorca Convention Centre with WICONA façades
Located on the seafront in Palma de Mallorca, the new Convention Centre, designed by architect Francisco Mangado, has become one of the city’s new architectural emblems. The 58,500-square metre building, which consists of two large halls and an angular façade, can host conventions with a capacity of over 3,000 or up to six smaller events at the same time. The irregular shape of the building – narrow and extremely long – means that its construction has created an exceptional 450-metre long section of seafront. “It is based on the idea of a large-scale urban boundary that must house an important project with a complex and diverse programme of events”, according to Mangado.
A façade that looks out to sea, made with WICONA
The façade is a thick, five-metre wide structure built using marine engineering techniques that, as well as avoiding the direct sunlight from the south, also houses the stairs and communications that join the different spaces and programmes. So, when anyone climbs up the stairs, they get a view of the sea through a series of large glass screens. This façade, made with the WICTEC EL unitised system by WICONA, is like a permeable wall, dense at the same time as open, which blends the seafront together with ambiguous spaces that are neither fully interior nor exterior. The building also has aluminium skylights created using the WICTEC 50 curtain wall by WICONA, giving the usable areas windows in the ceiling. Another important feature of this WICONA system is its Bronze Cradle to Cradle (C2C) standard certificate.
The building also features the WICTEC EL unitised curtain wall solution by WICONA, in natural anodised aluminium with 10+10 mm mounted double laminated glass.
On a functional level, the building’s private areas are located along the north façade, while the public areas are in the southern part. The interior has different convention and exhibition halls – large, voluminous rooms surrounded by empty spaces with platforms and walkways overhead that afford views of the exterior. The second floor, which connects with the hotel via a walkway that joins the two buildings, houses the building’s more everyday services such as smaller convention rooms and restaurants, as well as a large terrace which, when seen from the right perspective, looks like it flows out from the sea.
