{"id":2262,"date":"2026-10-07T12:43:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T10:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitearquitectura.com\/proyectos-unite\/arquitectura-efimera-reflejo-torrevieja\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T12:43:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T10:43:20","slug":"arquitectura-efimera-reflejo-torrevieja","status":"publish","type":"unite_proyecto","link":"https:\/\/unitearquitectura.com\/en\/proyectos-unite\/arquitectura-efimera-reflejo-torrevieja\/","title":{"rendered":"Ephemeral architecture: building things that aren't meant to last (and what we learnt with Reflejo)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost everything we do as architects is meant to last: fifty years, a hundred if it is looked after. Ephemeral architecture turns that idea on its head. It is designed for a few days or weeks, built, lived in and then gone. And yet some of the most influential works in the history of architecture were, originally, buildings with an expiry date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020 we designed and built one of those pieces with our own hands: Reflejo<\/strong>, a mirror installation in a street in the centre of Torrevieja that won second prize in the Arquitectura Ef\u00edmera 2020 competition. Here we explain what ephemeral architecture is, what some of its great examples teach us and what we learnt building our own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What ephemeral architecture is<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It is architecture born with a short life decided in advance: exhibition pavilions, urban installations, stage sets, festival monuments, emergency shelters. It is not \u201clesser\u201d architecture. Because it does not have to withstand decades, it can afford what a building cannot: trying out a new material, a daring form or an idea that is not yet ready to be permanent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is why it works as a laboratory. What is tested in an ephemeral piece very often ends up in everyday buildings. Four examples explain it better than any definition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pavilion that lasted a year and changed the century<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Pabell\u00f3n
Mies van der Rohe's German Pavilion in Barcelona. It was built for the 1929 International Exposition and dismantled in 1930; the one you can visit today is the 1980s reconstruction. Photo: Ashley Pomeroy \u00b7 CC BY 3.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mies van der Rohe built it for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition and it was taken down the following year. It stood for a few months and, even so, became one of the most studied works of modern architecture: sliding planes, a roof that seems to float, marble, glass and water reflecting one another. Half a century later it was rebuilt on the same spot. Sometimes the ephemeral is what endures the longest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A commission for a single summer<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Pabell\u00f3n
The 2016 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion by BIG: a wall of fibreglass boxes that \u201cunzips\u201d like a zip. Photo: David Hawgood \u00b7 CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Since 2000, London's Serpentine Gallery has commissioned a temporary pavilion every summer from an architect who has not yet built in England. It goes up in June in Kensington Gardens and comes down in autumn. For many of those architects it has been the showcase where they could show the world a way of building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cardboard against the earthquake<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Catedral
Shigeru Ban's Transitional Cathedral in Christchurch, opened in 2013 after the 2011 earthquake. Its main structure is made of cardboard tubes. Photo: Michal Klajban \u00b7 CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Shigeru Ban has been building with cardboard tubes for decades: shelters for displaced people, pavilions, churches. In Christchurch, after the earthquake that destroyed the cathedral, he built a temporary one in this material. His underlying idea is that what makes a building last is not the material, but people loving it and caring for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our own tradition: monuments built to burn<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Monumento
An Alicante hoguera in 2026. Beneath the figures there is a structure designed to be put up in a few days, withstand wind and crowds\u2026 and burn well on the night of 24 June. Photo: Ottolovesu \u00b7 CC0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There is no need to go far. The Hogueras of Alicante and the Fallas of Valencia are ephemeral architecture in its purest form: monuments several storeys high that take a year to design, go up in a few days and burn in a single night. Behind each one there is structure, calculation and craft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflejo: mirrors to look at poverty<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Arquitectura Ef\u00edmera 2020 was the seventh edition of an event organised by architect and lecturer Adriana Figueiras with students and young architects from the University of Alicante, together with the University Campus and Torrevieja Town Hall. That year, seven installations took over Calle Joaqu\u00edn Chapaprieta and Plaza Waldo Calero from 3 to 31 October. Each one had to explain one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were given the hardest one to show: SDG 1, no poverty<\/strong>. Poverty can't be seen from a shopping street, and that is exactly why we chose the mirror. From the outside, the installation reflects the city as it is: the fa\u00e7ades, the shop windows, the palm trees, whoever walks by. Inside, behind the panels, there are real images and data on three faces of poverty in Torrevieja: housing, hunger and unemployment. To see one, you have to go through the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Render
The initial proposal, in the competition render. The faceted shape comes from folding a flat surface, like a sheet of paper. Image: Unit\u00e9 Arquitectura.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Every mirror, calculated<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A mirror doesn't reflect \u201cwhat is in front of it\u201d: it reflects whatever lies in the direction symmetrical to the gaze of the person looking at it. So each panel was sized and tilted using sight-line drawings, in plan and in section, so that someone standing at a specific point in the street would see exactly what we wanted reflected: the crown of a palm tree, the sky, the fountain, other people. Those points were marked on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"L\u00e1mina
Project sheet: calculating the height and width of each mirror from the sight lines, and fitting them into the shape of the installation. Image: Unit\u00e9 Arquitectura.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

In a building, geometry responds to use. Here it responded to the gaze: the size of each mirror was decided by where the eye of a passer-by would be.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Building light: aluminium, angles and bolts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ephemeral work makes you think the opposite way to a building site: everything has to be made in a workshop, loaded onto a lorry, put up in a morning and taken down without leaving a mark on the paving. The solution was a self-supporting skin of 6 mm aluminium composite panels with no separate structure: the panels themselves, folded against each other, are the structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Element<\/th>Quantity<\/th>What for<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Mirror-finish composite panels, 6 mm<\/td>8 panels, about 5.7 m\u00b2<\/td>The reflecting faces<\/td><\/tr>
Aluminium composite panels, 6 mm<\/td>18 panels, about 8.2 m\u00b2<\/td>The rest of the skin, which also acts as the structure<\/td><\/tr>
Steel sheet angles<\/td>67 pieces and 268 metric bolts<\/td>Joining the panels along their edges<\/td><\/tr>
Steel base plates<\/td>15 plates with 4 bolts each<\/td>Fixing the installation to the paving<\/td><\/tr>
Recycled fishing nets<\/td>About 10 m\u00b2, donated<\/td>Stretched between the volumes in the design<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody>
Cost of materials<\/strong><\/td><\/td>\u2248 \u20ac1,240<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tfoot><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Axonometr\u00eda
Breakdown and joints: the steel plate to the ground, the plate-to-panel joint, the angles between panels and the fixing of the nets. Image: Unit\u00e9 Arquitectura.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Materials costing around \u20ac1,240 was no accident. It was a condition of the project, and the jury singled out precisely the material and the construction system. In ephemeral architecture, the budget is part of the design from the very first drawing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the workshop to the street<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We cut and folded the panels in a workshop, over full-size templates drawn on the floor, and assembled the whole piece to check everything fitted before taking it to Torrevieja. Then it was loaded onto a lorry, volume by volume, and the final assembly was done in the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Local
Fabrication in the workshop: panels cut over full-scale templates. Photo: Unit\u00e9 Arquitectura.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Uno
One of the volumes, assembled and loaded onto the lorry. Designing for transport means designing the maximum size of each piece. Photo: Unit\u00e9 Arquitectura.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What happened in the street<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For a month, the installation did what it was meant to do: people stopped, saw themselves, walked around the piece and went inside. The mirrors gave back a fragmented street, with the sky on the ground and the palm trees inside the shop windows. And inside, the other reflection was waiting \u2013 the one you don't see on a shopping street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Detalle
The sky and the fa\u00e7ades, reflected in the mirror faces. Photo: Unit\u00e9 Arquitectura.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Volumen
The street, given back in fragments. Photo: Unit\u00e9 Arquitectura.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Interior
Inside, the images on poverty in Torrevieja. Photo: Unit\u00e9 Arquitectura.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The competition jury awarded it second prize<\/strong>, for \u201cthe bold choice in the use of the material and its construction system, as well as its expressive formal success\u201d. The 2020 edition of the event was later recognised in the EMPORIA National Ephemeral Architecture Awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we bring to everyday architecture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Reflejo lasted a month, but what we learnt from it stays with us in every project:<\/p>\n\n\n\n