Marbella: for many, a synonym for luxury and paradise. A city that, since the 1950s, has positioned itself as an international holiday benchmark. But behind this image lies a complex reality: a city that lives intensely from seasonal tourism. Mass consumption generates large economic flows, yes, but also a material and energy footprint that the city cannot adequately manage.

Behind its facade, we find residual spaces, born from urban planning with often opaque interests. Spaces dedicated to mass events, the fairgrounds... a clear example of urban planning that, in just one week of festivities, can generate up to tons of waste. Its location has changed up to seven times, leaving behind large asphalted areas without a clear use. Eliminating natural areas, breaking up public space; leaving scars on an overcrowded city lacking space.

There are a large number of these 'non-places' in Marbella, which host temporary uses and, for short periods, become high-consumption points. All of this occurs in a city that, in turn, exports its waste – rubble, plastics, and organic remains – to other municipalities. And where there's a big problem, there's a big opportunity. These empty spaces are the perfect scenario to generate new urban experiments that take advantage of and confront these contradictions.

We are at the Arroyo Segundo fairgrounds, on the industrial periphery of Marbella, an obsolete and degraded area with large disused asphalted areas. Here, an urban mining and public space renaturalization protocol is being developed. Abandoned industries and illegal buildings are dismantled, the slabs and esplanades of the area are demolished, and materials such as aggregates, ceramics, trusses, and metal profiles are recovered... to create a reversible enclosure.

The project will act as a catalyst, supporting this process. A hybrid program based on a local and circular economy, an infrastructure dedicated to leisure and recycling. An artificial topography, an Urban Resource Exhibition Center.

The building is articulated in three phases. The first is built with aggregates extracted from the area. Large walls, a meter and a half thick, organize technical spaces and workshops dedicated to classifying, recycling, and storing materials, spaces for manufacturing products and architectures for the fair.

The walls, founded on geothermal piles, will be executed using the rammed earth technique, reinforced with post-tensioned steel cables to provide resistance against horizontal actions. The layout adapts to the existing terrain, taking advantage of an excavation to respect and give space to the stream basin.

In a second phase, the massive base is covered with a new ground plane, a new landscape for Marbella. The original topography is recovered through a walkable roof that renaturalizes the space, making it accessible through pedestrian paths and ramps that connect it to the city.

Prefabricated concrete slabs are supported on the rammed earth walls, forming successive platforms that modulate the slope of the topography. The roof system collects rainwater and provides thermal inertia, acting as an environmental device for leisure and recreation.

In the third phase, a series of pieces are embedded in the base, symbiotically activating the complex. A network of interior patios perforates the topography, providing natural light, ventilation, and vegetation. These voids concentrate vertical circulations and manage resources such as rainwater and organic matter. Riparian species favor the appearance of cool and habitable microclimates within the built mass.

On the other hand, aerial structures of a seasonal nature are incorporated, completing the system. They host programs dedicated to fairs and events, with auditoriums, grandstands, and viewpoints, and expand the resource center with workspaces and administration. Thus, the venue can operate at full capacity during high season. These structures are not understood as finished objects: they assume their temporary condition, being a reversible architecture designed to be dismantled without leaving a trace.

They are built from industrial building trusses, ten meters long, recovered from the initial protocol. Lightweight CLT slabs will be supported and hung from them, allowing for dry construction.

These pieces are understood as a third nature: they will cultivate species intended for the renaturalization of the environment and keep the infrastructure active in low season, with uses linked to the management, storage, and research of biomaterials that will generate the project's envelopes. Classified, stored, shredded, compacted, spun...

The building's envelope is resolved through a system of recycled layers. The base structure is covered with a textile envelope, made from recycled PET plastic filaments. This protects a second practical glass skin from the sun, where south-facing greenhouses and crops will be housed. Inside, the metal structure is filled with demountable CLT enclosures, technical walkways of recycled glass blocks, and biodegradable plastic curtains.

The structural nodes are key to ensuring reversible construction. Perforated front plates connect recycled profiles, reinforced for reuse, and bolted joints allow for assembly and disassembly. These nodes are complemented by steel cables that act as bracing systems, providing stability and wind resistance.

The project is not understood as a finished object, but as an organism in constant change. The recycling process becomes a spectacle where plastic that was once waste now dresses and undresses the city.

Permanent and ephemeral elements are integrated into a system that, after dismantling, allows structures, envelopes, and materials to be reused in other events and fairs on the Costa del Sol, thus prolonging the life cycle of resources.

The waste produced in one season becomes the material basis for building the next. After the party, the city not only recovers a degraded enclosure; a new festive space is born, a landscape between the natural and the artificial. The rubble is the support for a scenography, it is a digestor of non-places, it is a recycled event, it is a productive fair...