Yellow Is The Colour

We build in Spain since 1958. This is still one of my favourite pieces of grammatical deconstruction. And what do we, or they, build in Spain? They build the Taylor Woodrow “Pollentia”, a curious title of Roman allusion separated from its actual site and town by some seven kilometres and from all historical context by its symmetrical quadratic apartment shapes formed from a colour that shifts with the sunlight and clouds from grey to silver to white. In isolation, it is not unattractive – that part of it close to completion that is. Placed in a futuristic or now contemporary Metropolis, it would be just one apartment block of steel and non-colorific neutrality. In Puerto Pollensa, it is a further clash of competing shouts of modernity that are being echoed around the town and most notably along one street – Metge Llopis. The street itself is becoming a cluttered selection of flat-living, a set of galleries for advanced-architecture showrooms determined to strip out the soul and demonstrate how most to deal with limited space and advance the balances of developers.

Take one street, and it is an advert for towns such as Puerto Pollensa as now conceived. This advert is, in part, a function of architectural updating, the shiny new beast of we build in Spain conflicting with the utilitarian drabness of apartment facades opposite. In part, it is a counterpoint to the realities of economic life separate from the cupidity of the construction industry: the emptiness of the old Golo Golo aka Valnou store, the conversion of the one-time Olivers Restaurant from what was Lee’s grandiosity and Mick’s improbability into some sort of centre for old people. And then further down the road, the locked-up Jack Frost British supermarket for rent for months, or is it years, the never-worked Kudos aka La Bara up for sale, and on a corner another expression of newness, yet more apartments without colour.

Underlying this is the inevitable organic change of any community – of failure and bright new optimism. Yet the optimistic lack of colour, shielding the new anonymity of residential life, is suffused with its very absence of vibrancy, both ocular and atmospheric. It is habitation-chic without the charm that one has come to associate with Puerto Pollensa. The white and silver fascism is the new grey, or maybe it is also grey, it just depends how the light falls. But wherever on the neutral end of the spectrum, absent are the yellows, oranges or terracottas that hold the warmth of sunlight and can be found elsewhere. New Pollentia, Puerto Pollensa New Town.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Unit Four Plus Two. Today’s title – who?

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