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Seville is the capital of Andalucia and the cultural and financial centre of southern Spain. A city of just over 700,000 inhabitants (1.6 million in the metropolitan area, making it Spain's 4th largest city), Seville is Andalucia's top destination.In the 19th century Seville gained a reputation for its architecture and culture and was a stop along the Romantic "Grand Tour" of Europe. Seville has built on its tourism industry since, playing host to the International Exposition in 1992, which spurred the construction of a new airport, a new train station, a bullet train link to Madrid, new bridges and improvements to the main boulevards.

Metropol Parasol is a primarily wooden building located at La Encarnación square, in the old quarter of Seville. It was designed by the German architect Jürgen Mayer-Hermann and completed in April 2011. It has dimensions of 150 by 70 metres and an approximate height of 26 metres and claims to be the largest wooden structure in the world.

Its appearance, location, and delays and cost overruns in construction resulted in much public controversy. The building is popularly known as Las Setas de la Encarnación (Encarnación's mushrooms)

The structure consists of six parasols in the form of giant mushrooms, whose design is inspired by the vaults of the Cathedral of Seville and the ficus trees in nearby Plaza de Cristo de Burgos. Metropol Parasol is organized in four levels. The underground level (Level 0) houses the Antiquarium, where Roman and Moorish remains discovered on-site are displayed in a museum. Level 1 (street level) is the Central Market. The roof of Level 1 is the surface of the open-air public plaza, shaded by the wooden parasols above and designed for public events. Levels 2 and 3 are the two stages of the panoramic terraces (including a restaurant), offering one of the best views of the city centre.

Crucial for the behavior of the Metropol Parasol are the 3000 connection nodes at the intersections of the timber elements. Engineers at Arup and FFM developed an innovative connection detail based on glued-in steel bars, which at the same time are optimized for rapid erection on site. A thermal analysis revealed that the hot climate of southern Spain would be a particular challenge for the connection detail, engineers had to develop a new bonding process, specifically for use in this climate. Any detail adjustments and pre-assembly of the connection elements were carried out in Germany before the 3000 elements were sent by truck to southern Spain. The elements were polyurethane coated on-site by a local company before final assembly.

Since the 19th century, a market was located in the plaza, housed in a market building. The building was partially torn down in 1948 according to plans for urban renewal.

The market itself remained however, until 1973, when the rest of the dilapidated building was finally torn down. The land remained dormant until 1990, when the city decided to construct underground parking with space for a market on top.

However, in the midst of construction, ruins dating to Roman and Andalusian eras were discovered, and construction was frozen after an expenditure of 14 million euros. In 2004 the city decided to attempt to develop the area again, and opened an international competition to solicit bids.

Construction began on June 26, 2005, with an estimated cost of 50 million Euros and a projected completion date in June of 2007. However, unknown to the public, the project soon faced difficulties.

By May 2007 engineering firm Arup informed the municipal authorities that the structure was technically infeasible as designed, given that a number of structural assumptions had not been tested and appeared to violate the limitations of known materials

Much time was spent developing a feasible alternative plans to buttress the structure, which themselves proved impractical because of the added weight. A feasible design using glue as reinforcement was finally settled on only at the beginning of 2009.

Due to delays, the by some estimates the total cost of the structure approached 100 million Euros.

According to Jüergen Mayer H., the German architect responsible for the design, the structure was created for the purposes of a sight that is: “democratic, open and urban.” It can be safely said that the final product embodies all of these concepts!

Jürgen Mayer-Hermann (30 October 1965 in Stuttgart) (also known as Jürgen Mayer H.) is a German architect and artist. He is the leader of the architecture firm "J. MAYER H." in Berlin

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