This weekend I went biking to the Forum 2004, the impressive site of the international event that was held last year in Barcelona dedicated to the principles of Cultural Diversity, World Peace and Sustainable Economic Development.

Reading and viewing the nice presentations on the archived website, you get an idea of what I’m talking here:

“The Forum site occupies an area of 320,000 square meters and has a capacity of 79,200 persons distributed as follows: 50,000 in the port esplanade and auditoriums, 26,000 in the Barcelona International Convention Center, and 3,200 in the Forum Building, which is being constructed by the Swiss architects Herzog and De Meuron.

With 68,000 square meters of surface area, the Barcelona International Convention Center (CCIB), will be the largest convention center in the south of Europe.

The main Forum space, known as “the Plaza,” will cover an area of 150,000 square meters. Once complete, it will be the second largest square in the world after Tiananmen Square in Beijing.”

It is really strange to have all this space for you alone, the square is empty, the buildings are empty, I look tiny inbetween this enormous spaces, I always think about how many trucks were needed to construct this all… I like the architecture a lot, still it feels very empty without people doing things around.

I took some pictures with my v800 mobile to give you an idea.

It reminds me of the construction of Brasilia, the futuristic city build between 1956 and 1960, designed by Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer.

“The city of Brasilia illustrates both the great expectations that its creators had for it, and the shortcomings that were unforeseen. Its existence is exciting and the lessons to be learned from it numerous.”