Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect

Alcúdia is not to get a Millennium Dome.

Of course it never was going to, but the architect of that unloved folly, Lord Rogers, was one of those on the short-list to redesign the old power station next to the commercial port.

A Pamplona-based firm, Alonso Hernández y Asociados, has won the pitch for the design of the conversion into what will be an arts and science museum. The firm’s proposal, entitled “El claro en el bosque” (the clearing in the forest), envisages the maintenance of most of the existing site, the chimneys included.

Contemporary architectural visions are suffused with the colour of an artist’s brush and a splattering of spiritual enigma. No project is defined in functional Bauhaus or Brutalist terms. The design philosophy for the power station is no different, with its invocation of nature and mystery as though it were a “majestic ruin” one comes across in a forest.

Seemingly, the inspiration for the re-working of the power station was the Tate Modern, formerly the Bankside Power Station, a building originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the consultant for the Battersea Power Station.

Scott was essentially an architect of the modern school tinged with Gothic. Bankside was an example. As a reference point for the Alcúdia redevelopment, there is some sense to use it as a type of model. But, whereas the chimneys of both Bankside and especially Battersea (necessary functional elements) were the results of Scott’s design improvisation, the chimneys of the Alcúdia station can boast no architectural inspiration other than pure functionality. And as for the chimneys, so also for the whole edifice.

The Alcúdia station offers little expression of important industrial architecture, nor does it resonate with an industrial heritage which both the London power stations did and which it has been seen fit to preserve. Chimneys alongside the Thames are memorials to an industrial vigour, however much that may have dwindled over the years.

Stand, say, in Playa de Muro and scan your eyes along the bay of Alcúdia and you see a certain symmetry of low-rise hotel modernity, punctuated as the eyes look towards Alcanada by the towers of the station. For the looker, they are things to make the eyes sore. Yet, in that they break up that symmetry, they might be said to be of consequence. They serve both as landmarks on the landscape and as a visual shock. I am in favour of such shocks; I am also in favour of the preservation of industrial architecture (though I have previously questioned the point of preserving the Alcúdia station). The redesigned site will doubtless look splendid, close-up, but that visual shock on the landscape is not one that most want. The tourist on the beach wants serenity of view. Industrial images are, therefore, an affront. A tourist to London will happily admire such preservation, but in Alcúdia? Context is everything in architecture. A dome, now that might be ok.


From architecture to archaeology. “Ultima Hora” reports that work on a projected new residential development in Puerto Alcúdia is to be suspended for 20 days while an investigation is made into pottery remains found at the site (at the corner of Coral and Mar i Estany close by the Coral de Mar hotel). The investigation will seek to establish if there are grounds for excavation, as it is possible that the site corresponds to the port of the old Roman town. The discovery throws up a theory that, apparently, had not been tested, namely that remains of the Pollentia port could be in this part of Alcúdia.

This makes one wonder why it had not been considered. Furthermore, if these remains prove to be of importance, then one also wonders about other sites in the port area not already built on. Could parts of Puerto Alcúdia become vast excavation sites rather than places to build “thousands of dwellings” on?


QUIZ
Yesterday - Thomas Dolby, “Hyperactive”. Today’s title - a song by one of the best contemporary US bands.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)