The spatial design project for the 43rd edition of ARCO, Madrid’s major contemporary art fair, is presented as a huge work of ‘domestic urbanism’ – a veritable pop-up city on view for five days in pavilions 7 and 9 at the IFEMA premises. On a formal level, the project uses materials and systems associated with fairs to come up with a unique ‘object-oriented urbanism.’ From a conceptual viewpoint, ARCO43 unfolds on two scales: one urban and the other architectural.

On the urban scale and through general planning, the scheme presents a distribution of the required uses in specific, compact, and pragmatic spaces containing the more concrete or private programs, creating public places in between that serve as small plazas, as in a piece of ‘domestic urbanism.’ These interstitial spaces are equipped with furniture whose design hybridizes domestic forms with urban materials and finishes, superposing the spheres of the home and the city. The overall overhead lighting is reduced to a minimum, in such a way that the ceiling plane is transferred from the 12 meters of the roof to the 4 meters marked by the new plane of light floating at a homier height.

On the architectural level, the project works exclusively with materials, objects, and systems endemic to fairs, upholding their aesthetic to concoct an unexpected place, a special ‘artificial ecology.’ MDF boards with a maximum length of 3.66 meters, stage spotlights, elastic textiles, and linear meters of fairground carpet roll, among other things, are part of a testing ground for ‘object-oriented urbanism.’