Address: Av. de Beiramar s/n

Construction has recently commenced on a new Conference Centre and Auditorium in Vigo. The site of this new venue once held a cod salting factory and other activities related to the fishing industry. The large building which was demolished belonged to the Group Empresas Mar, Casa Mar. It is now owned by the Council of Vigo and was acquired from the employees of the MAR Company.

The surface area of the site is 56,000m2 and the building, which should be ready by 2009, is being designed by architect César Portela Fernández – Jardón.

The Auditorium will have a main concert hall to seat almost 1,600, and thus meets the great demand that exists in the city for such a venue.

The building will be divided into areas run by Vigo Council and others for private enterprise.

• Run by local authorities: Conference Hall – Auditorium, Exhibition Halls, Dining area, (23,000m2). Car park with space for 600 vehicles.
• Private enterprise: A hotel, shopping centre, cinema and restaurants and parking space for 565 vehicles (33,000m2).

The architectural design aims to keep the building’s industrial past in mind, while planning its future with a completely different use. According to César Portela, the aim is to create a monumental building, symbolic of the city, yet a faithful expression of its content, capable of highlighting its situation at the edge of the city and the edge of the shoreline, a building that will join the city and the sea by its presence there, and capable of fulfilling the general desire in Vigo of opening the city to the sea.

The final design has been described by Portela himself as "open architecture, expressive and intimate at the same time. Architecture that guarantees intimacy with a double façade - one of glass on the inside, and another of perforated metal that surrounds the building and shows all the different activities going on inside. The second façade quickly disappears, leaving only glass and allowing a double perforation to appear that reveals a great central space to the city and the bay".

The Auditorium and Conference Hall is to be a centre where cultural activities organized in the auditorium and exhibition halls, and social, cultural and business initiatives organized by private enterprise, may flourish under the one roof.

As the architect himself says, it is "a monumental style building that will become a symbol of the Modern Vigo - a building which is able, with its impact and exemplary nature, to trigger a regeneration process in the urban structure of the whole area, and so revitalize its whole social structure and image".