Mark Fenwick, Partner, Fenwick Iribarren Architects, Spain

2023
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Mark Fenwick is Senior Partner of Fenwick Iribarren Architects, based in Madrid for the past 33 years. The practice has grown over the years to become one of the largest architectural practices in Spain, and participates in many distinguished national and international projects.
In recent years the office has become leaders in Football Stadium design, and is fast becoming one of the main international architectural practices with expertise in this field. FIA has worked on some of the most important projects in Spain such as one of the tallest buildings in Spain, Torre Espacio at 250m, and at present on Caleido, the Fifth Tower in Madrid, a truly multiuse building with a vertical university, a hospital and a shopping centre, one of the most prestigious and tallest schemes in the City at 180m high.
FIA has been active in Qatar, and were the designers of the first 2022 World cup stadium with the Qatar Foundation Stadium. Since then FIA have developed two more stadiums for the World Cup, and the office will be the only architectural practice in the world with three world cup stadiums in the 2022 event out of the eight required.  FIA are involved in a number of other buildings in Madrid such as the Helios Complex, to be headquarters of ING Bank, and the first Student Hotel in La imprenta Building in Cuesta San Vicente.
The Espanyol FC stadium which opened in 2009, and FIA´s first stadium became winner of the World Stadium Venue award for best Sports Venue 2010 and also achieved the award for Best Stadium in the Spanish First Division 2013
The Stadium became a UEFA benchmark and was used as the centre for UEFA KISS conferences in 2010, and also other major venues where the stadium was placed unde r study as a model to follow.
Other major projects include the new Valencia stadium for 75,000 spectators, currently under construction and one of the largest new stadiums in Europe, as well as the Norwegian National stadium concept design, and the New National Stadium for Gibraltar. FIA has developed projects and schemes for over twenty major stadiums in four continents, Europe, Middle east, Africa and South America
Mark Fenwick is co-author of the prestigious UEFA publication called the “UEFA Guide for Quality Stadiums” and this is used not only in European federations but also abroad such as in south America and Japan. The book has now been published in six languages, English, German, Spanish, Russian, French and Japanese.
The practice has recently developed the FI Factor, a new and totally unique manner in which parametric software allows the evaluation of the quality of a Stadium Bowl. FIA research has allowed the very first manner in which a stadium Bowl can be classified and given a numeric value, a method essential for better stadium design.
Taking design to the last detail FIA has also developed a new stadium seat for stadiums, named the PIXEL seat, with Figueras as manufacturer in Barcelona, and which will become a major success for stadium seat deign.