Macondo Park, Shakira’s Madrid residence by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group – All photos are by ©Adrià Goula Photo, courtesy of BIG.

Architecture. When pop stars tour the world, they drag enormous stages and infrastructure from one city to the next, to be built and dismantled on repeat. For Shakira‘s Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour, the organisers chose otherwise: cut those costs and pour all the energy and budget into a single site. The result is Macondo Park, a vibrant 185,000-m² masterplan by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group in Madrid. Why settle for a stadium when you can build a town?

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Instead of ricocheting across Europe, Macondo Park is Shakira’s twelve-day residence and a temporary city. European fans go to her, as the mountain did with Mohamed. The format transforms the artist’s world into a total experience, reaching well beyond a single gig. We went there, and it was great – even if sponsors’ branding and merchandising came on rather strong.

Building the town took ten days. Using lightweight fabric, modular scaffolding systems, and reusable components, BIG assembled an entire ephemeral city of eight themed pavilions arranged around a central plaza, with room for 50,000 people per show. At Macondo Park, the studio explores how temporary architecture can stage large-scale entertainment with minimal permanent construction.

Inspired by Gabriel García Márquez’s fictional town of Macondo, the park was “conceived as an architectural manifestation of magical realism – a temporary town celebrating Latin culture as a fusion of Europe, the Americas, and Africa,” BIG’s Bjarke Ingels told Archipanic.

“Rather than a conventional concert venue, Macondo Park appears as an explosion of colour: a carnival of pavilions, each offering an immersive celebration of a different dimension of Latin culture – its food, art, fashion, literature, cinema and, of course, music.”

Arches draped in brightly coloured fabric at the ES LATINA main entrance mark the start of a colour-coded route that extends into the park and guides people to a pavilion in a corresponding hue. Along the way, reading rooms, screening spaces, performance art and exhibitions, fashion displays, food markets, and open kitchens invite exploration, along with dedicated spaces for children and families. Each pavilion takes up a different dimension of Latin culture.

Reuse was part of the plan from the outset. Every structure was designed to be taken down and used elsewhere after the residency ends, starting with the pavilions’ fabrics. The 500-plus tropical and Mediterranean trees that trace shaded routes and pockets of greenery will return to local nurseries, where they will keep growing, ready for future plantings.

All photos are by © Adrià Goula Photo, courtesy of BIG.