The Leon
Auditorium pays homage to Ortega y Gasset’s concept of ‘seeing and being seen’,
while responding to the model consolidated by the Manuel de Falla Auditorium in
Granada. It is an exercise in realism, its small size guaranteeing a certain
economy of means, and also reducing its presence in the city. It is precisely
this small-scale perception that leads to the exhibition hall being conceived
as a separate piece, allowing the building to simultaneously benefit from the
historically established costume of small foregrounds while also orienting the
building towards the San Marcos Hostal, and by this means outlining a new
visual order on the existing platform.
The auditorium thus turns its lion’s head in a plateresque echo of the San Marcos church, its face constructed as a stack of windows in which two diverse orders appear: the perimeter of the apertures that refer to the geometry of the construction, and the inner aperture of each window, fruit of the necessities of the interior. The constructed plane thus oscillates between a group of stacked windows that are equal in their being and different in their form of being. Additionally, the main volume of the building, relegated to the background, projects its section until it becomes an elevation; an extruded volume whose profile is lightened by placing more emphasis on the surface than in the mass.
The auditorium thus turns its lion’s head in a plateresque echo of the San Marcos church, its face constructed as a stack of windows in which two diverse orders appear: the perimeter of the apertures that refer to the geometry of the construction, and the inner aperture of each window, fruit of the necessities of the interior. The constructed plane thus oscillates between a group of stacked windows that are equal in their being and different in their form of being. Additionally, the main volume of the building, relegated to the background, projects its section until it becomes an elevation; an extruded volume whose profile is lightened by placing more emphasis on the surface than in the mass.
TECHNICAL DATA. Location:
Avenida Reyes Leoneses, León, Spain. Architects: Luis M. Mansilla and Emilio
Tuñón. Client: Regional Government of Castilla y León, Municipality of León. Collaborators: Andrés Regueiro, Fernando
García-Pino, María Linares and Matilde Peralta. Structural
engineers: Alfonso Gómez Gaite. Mechanical engineers: J.G. Asociados. Acoustic engineers: Higini Arau. Graphic design: Gráfica Futura. Construction managers: Luis M. Mansilla, Emilio
Tuñón and Andrés Regueiro. Quantity
Surveyor/Technical Architect: Santiago Hernán and Juan Carlos Corona. Competition: 1994. Design project: 1996. Work
completion: 2002. Built area: 9.000 m2. General contractor: Auditorio UTE (FCC/CRS). Photographer: Luis Asin.
