Cimbra
In every construction process, systems that endure after architectural materialisation coexist with others whose ephemerality allows them to be struck once they achieve stability by their own means — demanding as many resources as the permanent ones.
Auxiliary systems — formwork, falsework, propping, scaffolding, or safety nets — typically account for between 35% and 60% of the total cost of executing a structural element. At the overall budget level, temporary works on site are quantified at between 3% and 5% of direct costs. They are the essential matrix that supports matter before setting; the technical scaffolding that enables the construction of reality, yet which paradoxically always disappears and hides after demoulding. And yet it is precisely within this temporary structure that the true advancement of the discipline most often resides. The inner scaffolding of the dome of the Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, together with the hoisting systems designed by Brunelleschi, enabled cultural progress and the conquest of what had been considered technically impossible. In this sense, CIMBRA reclaims the value of everything that sustains the process.
Contemporary practice has overflowed its classical boundaries toward a discipline characterised by transversality, aligning naturally with the motto of the UIA 2026 Barcelona World Congress of Architects: "Becoming. Architectures for a planet in transition." The alternatives available to the profession have traced new bifurcations that show how today's architect operates as mediator, artist, researcher, landscape designer, urban planner, craftsperson, disseminator, and communicator, among others. This plurality of ways of practising the discipline is solidly demonstrated not only in the 209 proposals selected by the CSCAE for the 2026 Architecture Awards, but in all those that fell just short and yet flood Instagram, TikTok, and the leading national and international specialised media. Within this context of transition — this "becoming" — the CIMBRA space stands as the ideal setting to house this broad representation of the profession.
The project proposes to inhabit the intrados of the formwork, understanding the pavilion as that prior, latent, and necessary supporting structure before releasing the profession's multiple alternatives. The space is conceived as bounded and compressed, built from four planes made of temporary construction material. The pavilion's cross-section is deliberately asymmetrical. The vertical plane acts as a strict, serene limit, while the inclined plane functions as a vast potential roof that invites the visitor inward. This geometric convergence produces a spatial funnel effect, compressing the human scale at the base to foster intimacy in encounters, while opening upward in search of light and the breathing space of the congress. The auxiliary structural skeleton, formed by props and raking shores, is left exposed along the exterior perimeter, revealing the bare nakedness of the engineering. By contrast, the interior space, delimited by the smooth face of the reused phenolic boards, offers a clean canvas for the exhibition and signage of the CSCAE, creating an 'agora' of gathering and dissemination.
Time remains frozen, as if at the instant just before the demoulding of a model that has been setting for years, passed down from that generation which stepped into the working world just before the crisis. By turning the auxiliary means into the architectural end, the pavilion celebrates not only the finished result, but the living process, the collective effort, and the network of diverse trajectories that today sustain and shape the future of architecture.
For now, the ecosystem we inhabit encourages us to engage with instinct and intuition, to recover a lost dialogue with the trades and the territories to which they are closely bound, and to conceive of the challenge of our time through a choreographic commitment. The message conveyed today by these exhibited practices — not only to this generation but to others watching from the edge of an enabling abyss — is essential to understanding the direction that society, teaching, and institutions must take together.
Paul Virilio coined the term event-landscapes to describe places where what happens matters more than what is there. CIMBRA could be considered just such a place. A landscape of events, of conversations, of good encounters and care, of words and images that, beyond their form or record, transform the way we look at our practice.
MODULAR AND SUSTAINABLE SYSTEM
The pavilion inverts traditional constructive logic. The auxiliary infrastructure becomes the main shelter, revealing the beauty of process, the rawness of material, and the tension of equilibrium.
Tectonics, Circularity, and Dry Assembly
The materialisation of the CIMBRA space is governed by a strict principle of circular economy and ephemeral assembly. To this end, wet construction, binders, and single-use materials are entirely dispensed with, in favour of an architecture of assembly. The project uses, in its entirety, a lightweight modular formwork system drawn from reused construction industry stock, repurposing its temporary function to transform it into structure, enclosure, and exhibition support.
The construction system is articulated through the addition and stabilisation of standardised industrial components, ensuring a fast, clean, and fully reversible assembly.
The spatial envelope is resolved through the repetition of a base module: the reused phenolic panel. This continuous, smooth, dark-toned surface acts as the intrados of the pavilion, providing a neutral canvas ideal for exhibiting the CSCAE's proposals. Each phenolic panel is confined and stiffened by a metal frame or substructure. This perimeter frame, with its characteristic industrial finish, not only protects the edge of the board but also absorbs the assembly's stresses, ensuring the piece's rigidity.
The integrity of the large wall panels is achieved through a system of simple mechanical connections. The coplanar joint between modules is executed dry, using a wedge clamp between frames — a fitting that ensures tight, perfectly aligned joints without the need for complex tools. To resist buckling and ensure an even distribution of loads (particularly on the inclined planes), the back of the formwork is reinforced with an orthogonal framework of profiles. This exoskeleton is made up of alignment rails that act as load-distributing uprights along the vertical axis, stitched together by horizontal load-distributing braces, giving the wall a monolithic rigidity despite its fragmented condition.
The pavilion's structural challenge lies in stabilising its inclined planes, which generate the interior space's "funnel effect." This geometric tension is resolved by leaving the propping system exposed, turning structural necessity into architectural expression. The thrust of the walls is counteracted by a battery of reused raking shores or double stabilising props — telescopic steel elements anchored to the frame that transmit loads to the ground, forming a diagonal perimeter colonnade. To absorb tolerances in the venue's flooring and ensure the system's exact plumb line, the base of the walls and props rests on adjustable levelling wedges.
Sustainability and Circularity: Zero Waste
Once the UIA 2026 Barcelona World Congress of Architects concludes, the pavilion is dismantled following the reverse process, generating neither rubble nor waste. All the pieces — panels, clamps, rails, and raking shores — return to the logistics chain of civil works or building construction. CIMBRA is, in essence, a borrowed architecture, an event-landscape whose ecological footprint is nil.
The space engages with the context of contemporary ecological and social challenges as part of the Congress experience, functioning as "design" research within a living, fragmented laboratory that dialogues with and catalyses the valuable research and conversations carried out during this international event.
Ultimately, the CSCAE's institutional space demands a formal and discursive narrative equal to the urgent contemporary challenges and to the prestige of the international guests gathering in Barcelona. CIMBRA takes on this responsibility by offering far more than an exhibition support: it is the spatial reflection of a Spanish profession that is bifurcated, plural, and resilient — a discipline that has demoulded its traditional figure to show that its true value no longer lies solely in the finished object, but in the honesty of process, the rigour of ongoing research, and an unwavering sustainable commitment.
