Following the opening weekend of Shakira's Madrid residency, Macondo Park has officially opened at the Iberdrola Music venue in Villaverde, Madrid. Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in collaboration with Komodo and Vampire, the 185,000-square-meter temporary destination surrounds the venue designed by BIG for Shakira's concerts, extending the venue with a series of cultural and public spaces inspired by the fictional town of Macondo from Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. The park will host daily cultural programming alongside the concerts throughout the singer's 12-show residency, which continues through October 11, before its temporary structures and landscape elements are dismantled and removed from the site.
The park is organized around a central plaza and twelve thematic pavilions, with color-coded routes connecting different areas across the site. The program brings together music, dance, art, gastronomy, literature, cinema, and fashion, extending the use of the concert grounds beyond the performances themselves. More than 500 tropical and Mediterranean trees are distributed throughout the site, creating shaded areas and gathering spaces along the routes and around the pavilions.
The temporary structures were assembled in approximately 10 days using lightweight fabric structures, modular scaffolding systems, and reusable components. Drawing on construction elements commonly used for large-scale events, the approach combines a shared structural system with distinct configurations and fabric treatments for the different pavilions and destinations across the park. The result is a temporary architectural framework designed to accommodate a range of cultural activities while adapting to the short duration of the residency.
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From the outset, the project was developed with its eventual dismantling and reuse in mind. Following the conclusion of the concerts, the temporary buildings and landscape elements will be taken apart, with structural components and materials intended for reuse or repurposing elsewhere. The more than 500 trees planted across the site will also leave the venue after the event and return to local nurseries, with an aim to extend the temporary landscape strategy beyond the duration of the residency.
In other recent news, BIG is also nearing completion of the EVE Music Hall in Čepin, Croatia, a 10,000-square-meter cultural venue designed to accommodate concerts, conferences, exhibitions, and other events. The studio has also revealed the design for the new Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville, developed in collaboration with William Rawn Associates and HASTINGS Architecture, with construction expected to begin in 2027. Meanwhile, the Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art in China, designed by BIG, ARTS Group, VIA.inc, and SHUISHI, has officially opened to the public on the shores of Jinji Lake.
