This book presents a meticulous investigation into the architecture of the Ferias del Campo (Country Fairs), which developed between the 1950s and 1970s, creating what can now be understood as a true exhibition landscape. The complex holds immense value, both for its careful landscape design—perfectly integrated into the Casa de Campo—and for its unique buildings, which served as a true experimental laboratory for modern architecture. Architects such as Cabrero and Ruiz, along with Sota, Fisac, Aburto, Romaní, and many others, brilliantly managed to combine the bold stylistic and constructive renewal that the country required at the time with a desire to maintain a degree of continuity with vernacular architecture.
The book aims to condense the content of the doctoral thesis from which it originated into an accessible, easy-to-read format, featuring numerous original images and plans drafted by the author based on recovered documentation. This allows for a deeper understanding of the site's architecture and its relationship with the city, highlighting its exceptional uniqueness and quality. Evidence of this is the site's general protection as part of the Casa de Campo’s BIC (Property of Cultural Interest) status, in addition to the various levels of protection afforded to nearly fifty of its buildings.
Today, despite its almost ghostly state—caught between ruin, abandonment, and the sporadic, sometimes careless, reuse of the buildings still standing—this area continues to form an exhibition landscape of extraordinary potential. Its strategic location between the Casa de Campo and the Madrid-Río park opens up a wide range of opportunities for intervention. Recovering it by implementing a revitalization plan that incorporates a new program of activities—combining leisure, culture, education, production, and civic participation—would restore a heritage site of primary importance in contemporary architecture to Madrid.
