Manuel Bouzas and salazarsequeromedina's proposal is conceived as a response to a duality that combines two built spaces, the Guest Lounge, with an evoked space: the forests that burned uncontrollably last August.
“We conceived this challenge as a material laboratory: exploring what stories the resources and landscapes we mobilized can tell. With them, we propose to create a flexible space, a place of calm and encounter during the day, which can transform into a celebratory setting at night; an exceptional island amidst the intensity of the fair: more shadowy than exposed, more veiled than opaque, lighter than heavier.”
"350.000 Ha" ARCO Madrid 2026 Guest Lounge by Manuel Bouzas and salazarsequeromedina. Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz.
The project is organized around the contrast between light and darkness. Six diagonal planes of light are suspended 4 meters above the ground by metal trusses. These planes, which act as lamps, are covered with thin wooden veneers that receive light projected by spotlights, which hang from another independent and adjustable truss. The fire is directed towards a dark, rectangular space where guests relax. Around it are arranged the bar, cloakroom, sponsor areas, and a diagonal wall that divides the rectangle into two triangles: one dark, designated for the lounge bar, and another golden, housing the restaurant and a private VIP room.
The proposed Guest Lounge is structured around two ideas. The first involves constructing the entire structure using reclaimed wood from burned forests, utilizing the wood in four different ways. For the cladding, the four outer segments of charred bark removed before sawing were used. Sawn timber was used to construct the surfaces that will serve as the fire pit. To clad the fire pit's skin, thin sheets of 2 to 3 mm veneer were used, obtained by "peeling" the inner core. Finally, OSB boards, made from shredded branches, bark, and trunks, were used for the restaurant's cladding.
"350.000 Ha" ARCO Madrid 2026 Guest Lounge by Manuel Bouzas and salazarsequeromedina. Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz.
The second idea proposes building a monumental fire pit, capable of bringing visitors together in a warm, welcoming, and captivating atmosphere.
"We sought to evoke a hypnotic experience of gathering, like the Sun installed by Olafur Eliasson at Tate Modern in 2003. But also an intimate, almost domestic atmosphere, reminiscent of the candlelit fire in Stanley Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon (1975). A space that invites individual rest, as in Godfried Schalcken's painting Man with a Beard Reading by Candlelight (1707)." And all of this is built from a constellation of unique but related elements, evoking the family of Akari paper lamps that Isamu Noguchi manufactured in Japan."
"350.000 Ha" ARCO Madrid 2026 Guest Lounge by Manuel Bouzas and salazarsequeromedina. Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz.
