Palma town hall is on a mission. You can't accuse the current administration of sitting on its hands. It has zeal in its hearts and announces it at every available opportunity. While there is a great deal of zealous bluster - just what is it with Aurora Jhardi and terraces - not all of what emanates from the town hall is fanatical nonsense. Take the announcement of a "landscaping plan" to bring some order and "dignity" to shopping streets and to shops themselves. The principle should be applauded, though how universal this will be has to be open to question. Getting rid of tatty facades and things that stick out from shop fronts might be easy and sensible for the old part of the city, but Playa de Palma?
The Cort talks the good talk of applying measures to all neighbourhoods, but there is more than just a slight suspicion that the administration sees very little further than the imminent surroundings of the privileged location of the town hall edifice: the old part of the city, in other words. Playa de Palma appears to have an alternative existence; it is a universe unoccupied by the town hall. At least the administration has been generous enough to stump up fifteen grand of "urgent" funding to replace rubbish containers that some malcontents appear to take delight in setting fire to.
Municipal-wide ordinance, which is to be the case with the "landscaping plan", takes no account of municipal diversity. While not advocating a charter for unbridled tattiness, it does seem to me as if the town hall believes that what is good for the old part is good for everywhere else. It doesn't necessarily follow that it is. This all-city approach is to be rolled out from the primary purpose of the plan, which is to establish order in the old part, where there is heritage in terms of architecture, appearance and atmosphere to be preserved.
There are other areas of Palma with heritage to be maintained. Es Molinar is a case in point. Here is somewhere with the feel and look of traditional seaside. It is a curio of a village appended to the city, but one that has been subjected to an architectural vandalism, made possible through unthinking permissiveness at the planning department (or possibly through something else; you can never be sure). Antoni Noguera, the mayor-in-waiting with his urban planning and "model of the city" responsibilities, tackles his brief with plenty of heart and sometimes with his head. He is absolutely right to insist that what goes on in Es Molinar should now be in line with its traditional architecture.
Sympathetic, in harmony, these should be the overriding objectives for developments of whatever sort in whichever location, whether Palma or elsewhere. Undoing the wrongs of the past and even the recent past, as is the case with Es Molinar, is largely impossible, but restorative measures can be applied; discipline can be introduced.
There are examples across Mallorca where a lack of discipline has been allowed to detract from urban centres and residential areas. In some instances, these collide. Puerto Pollensa is an example. The absence of discipline has given rise, away from the front line, to unlovely architectural competition. Puerto Pollensa is far from being the only example, but as with other resort areas it doesn't come under any sort of protected status that would allow development to at least attempt to create some harmony rather than the result, which is one by which nothing fits.
Applying a set of standards across a municipality as a whole, which is what Palma wishes to do, fails to appreciate that component parts of municipalities have their own specific needs. Rather than one size fits all, there should be (should have been) a customised approach through which character is established or maintained. This goes deeper than wide areas, such as resorts, it applies also to specific urbanisations. I can think of one in Playa de Muro.
The urbanisation grew, architecturally, almost by chance rather than by design, but sympathy was created by style of building and, as importantly, the use of colours - those of Mallorca's land, sky and sea. Blues, yellows, oranges, terra cottas have now been invaded by the fad for blocks of neutrals. Architectural faddism would doubtless argue that this type of new build is more efficient. But when the resulting construction consists of a wall almost totally of glass that, in summer, will face the full force of the sun, one would need to query such an argument.
Palma is right to wish to preserve appearance in its old centre, just as other municipalities have regulations to retain the traditional look of their old towns. Away from these protected areas, though, there is a free-for-all. Discipline should be imposed. Architect and developer whim should not be allowed to dictate and detract.
Showing posts with label Architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Architecture. Show all posts
Friday, September 09, 2016
Sunday, August 30, 2015
The New Grand Tour: Mallorca's culture
Mallorca has some remarkable old buildings, some of which are barely discernible as buildings any longer. From the enormous imposition of Gothic churches dominating village centres to the majesty of mansions or monasteries in urban, rural and mountain locations and to the mysteriousness of the constructions of antiquity, within the smallness of Mallorca there is a vastness of architectural and archaeological heritage. It is patrimony of which the island is proud and yet which it has struggled to inform the wider world of. Culture and so cultural tourism feature high on priority lists of the regional government, the island's council, the town halls and the hoteliers federation, now committing itself to collaborative promotion of this grand collection, but somehow it is a collection, with the stories to be told, that can seem lost amidst the diverse and rich history of Mediterranean culture.
Though there is on Mallorca a collision of that culture, it is one, even with its ancient relics, that is of lesser antiquity. It is the lot perhaps of Mallorca and the Balearics that they are and were in the western Mediterranean. Most of what really mattered in Mediterranean culture occurred elsewhere and much earlier. The grand civilisations of prehistory were not western ones, and when the civilisations of more modern times arose, there were not, despite the claim of Ramon Llull in the thirteenth century, great Mallorcan seats of learning, just as there were not the architectural manifestations of imperial power or mercantile domination.
The first nineteenth century Mallorcan tourists of popular legend - Chopin and Sand and then the Archduke Louis Salvador and his friends - have assumed the importance they have because they were unusual. For a member of the nobility, Mallorca was a curious choice for the Archduke. Europe's noble class had chosen to ignore Mallorca (and indeed most of Spain) when indulging its youthful development on the Grand Tour. Where the Mediterranean was concerned, Rome and Venice were stopping-off points, destinations of the one-time great civilisations, of the arts, of culture as it was being defined. Palma wasn't even on the map. An island such as Mallorca was thought not to have anything to offer the culture-seeking bourgeoisie and aristocracy.
Culture, in a Mallorcan sense, was thus never given great prominence. There was no history, so to speak, to Mallorca's history. When tourism truly burst out, it was on to a whole new and artificial civilisation: that of the coastal resort. Yet in the first half of the last century, the focus of attention for tourism had been the island's heritage - natural and manmade. The routes for excursions in the years before the Civil War were to Valldemossa, Deya and Soller, or they were to the Caves of Drach, where a concert would feature as well. For eleven pesetas (thirteen on Saturdays), the Mallorca Tourist Board arranged these trips which left Palma at 9.15am every day of the week.
But while they went to sites like Miramar and Son Marroig, they didn't take in the real antiquity of the island, and that was because most of it hadn't been discovered or hadn't been excavated to a sufficient extent that there was something to see. The work on the Roman city in Alcúdia only started in the 1930s, for example.
There was greater antiquity being overlooked, and it is the one that has the mystery not just because of the strangeness of the remains but also because of precise timing. Mallorca's Talayotic period, from around the end of the second millennium BC, is a subject chewed over and debated by the archaeologists. These sites are now of immense interest and activity. Sa Galera, the small island off Can Pastilla, may date from as early as 1440BC. The dolmen burial sites of Son Baulo and near Colonia Sant Pere are thought to be older: pre-Talayotic. Another settlement - Ses Païsses in Arta - is a constant source of investigation. When was it actually created?
This cultural heritage, both prehistoric and modern, is being given greater accessibility and not just because of guided tours. Something has been borrowed from the days before the war when there were concerts at the Caves of Drach. Throughout this summer, there have been concerts in the gardens of grand buildings in Palma - La Misericordia, the former Convent of Santa Margalida (now the military history centre). There have been concerts at the fort in Cala Egos, at the Gràcia sanctuary in Llucmajor, and there are also concerts at Ses Païsses. There is one this evening by the pianist David Gómez.
Culture has, in a sense, finally arrived and it is doing so through a collision of diverse aspects of culture - music, art, architecture and archaeology. It's taken a long time, but Mallorca is now finding itself part of a contemporary grand tour, and people are discovering that the island does, after all, have a great deal to offer.
Though there is on Mallorca a collision of that culture, it is one, even with its ancient relics, that is of lesser antiquity. It is the lot perhaps of Mallorca and the Balearics that they are and were in the western Mediterranean. Most of what really mattered in Mediterranean culture occurred elsewhere and much earlier. The grand civilisations of prehistory were not western ones, and when the civilisations of more modern times arose, there were not, despite the claim of Ramon Llull in the thirteenth century, great Mallorcan seats of learning, just as there were not the architectural manifestations of imperial power or mercantile domination.
The first nineteenth century Mallorcan tourists of popular legend - Chopin and Sand and then the Archduke Louis Salvador and his friends - have assumed the importance they have because they were unusual. For a member of the nobility, Mallorca was a curious choice for the Archduke. Europe's noble class had chosen to ignore Mallorca (and indeed most of Spain) when indulging its youthful development on the Grand Tour. Where the Mediterranean was concerned, Rome and Venice were stopping-off points, destinations of the one-time great civilisations, of the arts, of culture as it was being defined. Palma wasn't even on the map. An island such as Mallorca was thought not to have anything to offer the culture-seeking bourgeoisie and aristocracy.
Culture, in a Mallorcan sense, was thus never given great prominence. There was no history, so to speak, to Mallorca's history. When tourism truly burst out, it was on to a whole new and artificial civilisation: that of the coastal resort. Yet in the first half of the last century, the focus of attention for tourism had been the island's heritage - natural and manmade. The routes for excursions in the years before the Civil War were to Valldemossa, Deya and Soller, or they were to the Caves of Drach, where a concert would feature as well. For eleven pesetas (thirteen on Saturdays), the Mallorca Tourist Board arranged these trips which left Palma at 9.15am every day of the week.
But while they went to sites like Miramar and Son Marroig, they didn't take in the real antiquity of the island, and that was because most of it hadn't been discovered or hadn't been excavated to a sufficient extent that there was something to see. The work on the Roman city in Alcúdia only started in the 1930s, for example.
There was greater antiquity being overlooked, and it is the one that has the mystery not just because of the strangeness of the remains but also because of precise timing. Mallorca's Talayotic period, from around the end of the second millennium BC, is a subject chewed over and debated by the archaeologists. These sites are now of immense interest and activity. Sa Galera, the small island off Can Pastilla, may date from as early as 1440BC. The dolmen burial sites of Son Baulo and near Colonia Sant Pere are thought to be older: pre-Talayotic. Another settlement - Ses Païsses in Arta - is a constant source of investigation. When was it actually created?
This cultural heritage, both prehistoric and modern, is being given greater accessibility and not just because of guided tours. Something has been borrowed from the days before the war when there were concerts at the Caves of Drach. Throughout this summer, there have been concerts in the gardens of grand buildings in Palma - La Misericordia, the former Convent of Santa Margalida (now the military history centre). There have been concerts at the fort in Cala Egos, at the Gràcia sanctuary in Llucmajor, and there are also concerts at Ses Païsses. There is one this evening by the pianist David Gómez.
Culture has, in a sense, finally arrived and it is doing so through a collision of diverse aspects of culture - music, art, architecture and archaeology. It's taken a long time, but Mallorca is now finding itself part of a contemporary grand tour, and people are discovering that the island does, after all, have a great deal to offer.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Rethinking Architecture: Mallorca's resorts
They're holding a workshop tomorrow at the headquarters of the Balearic College of Architects, the professional institute for the islands' architects. Among those taking part will be the president of the Mallorcan hoteliers' federation, Inma de Benito, and the town hall architect from Calvia as well as a number of architectural students. The workshop's theme is Magalluf and its future. There is to be "critical reflection" on the relationship between architecture and urban planning and the living conditions of both tourists and residents in a tourism environment. Because of Magalluf's issues, it has been chosen as a suitable subject for student analysis.
If, as non-architects, you were to be asked for your architectural prescription for Magalluf's future, it might not get much further than calling in the wrecking crews, but this would be unfair in light of changes already undertaken or in progress in the resort. Indeed, because of these changes, one has to ask if Magalluf is a suitable subject. But your response would probably be one based on something other than architecture, i.e. the resort's poor reputation. Architecture and urban planning can and do determine social behaviour, but Magalluf is not so different, in architectural terms, to other resorts: in fact, because of the recent developments, it is somewhat better than many.
Magalluf was the last of Calvia's main tourism centres to receive the green light for development: it wasn't definitively given until 1959. By then Santa Ponsa and Palmanova were already under development, Paguera's plan had been approved, while Illetes had undergone limited hotel construction (or re-construction) from the late 1940s. Illetes is, in this regard, instructive. When the Maricel was originally built, replacing the previous Cas Català, it conformed to an architectural design, conceived by the Mallorcan Francisco Casas, which owed much to the Mallorcan manor house and it was in line with design thinking of the time. It is one of the great ironies of tourism in Mallorca that, as the island attempts a reinvention of resorts, the model of the 1950s prior to the economic necessity of mass tourism was a hotel like the Maricel and a tranquil spot such as Illetes. This style of hotel was itself a successor to the likes of the Formentor and, much earlier, Palma's Gran Hotel. Architecture was, therefore, conceived with a certain social behaviour in mind: that of the wealthy, the more refined and sophisticated.
The tourism boom shattered all this and introduced a tourism that was neither refined nor sophisticated. The resorts and their hotels complemented their guests. Architecturally, this meant a form of touristic Brutalism. Urban layouts, while many adhered to blueprints from the 1930s of a garden-city nature (like in Santa Ponsa), were compromised by the need for construction which overwhelmed design principles for greater environmental and human co-existence harmony. Tourists, innocents abroad and mostly unfamiliar with alternatives, accepted this Brutalism, as did residents, many of them incomers: the resort workers.
It is interesting to note that tourist and resident co-existence is a factor in the workshop's considerations, because little attention was paid to such a thing when the resorts were springing up. Had there been, there might have been alternative urban planning, as was the case with French resorts that were specifically for tourists. These enclaves can be criticised for being tourist ghettoes, removed from the local community, but they have certain advantages in reducing the potential for resident-tourist conflict. Nevertheless, resorts, in an ideal world, should be places where tourist and resident mingle together in cultural interplay, and some do conform to this ideal better than others, as might be said to be the case with Puerto Pollensa, for instance. But then Puerto Pollensa wasn't an artificial resort. It grew organically rather than out of nothing or very little, and its architecture, even today, for the most part reflects this.
The ideal of cultural interplay, the bringing together of peoples from different nations in peace through tourism, was one that tourism visionaries had: Horizon's Vladimir Raitz, for example. But this didn't happen because of the artificial nature of resorts such as Magalluf and because of the demand for the British bar or the German kneipe. Subsequently, this ideal has been made even more untenable thanks to the all-inclusive.
Though Magalluf has experienced its improvements, the negative legacy of architectural and urban planning, exacerbated by Calvia's 1971 general urban plan and expansion which followed, most definitely remains. But so it does in other resorts. As a case study, the architectural students might come up with some solutions, but it is not just Magalluf which needs one. There again, we have been here before. In 2000, the then government embarked upon a three-year cycle of activities to bring forth architectural ideas for Mallorca's future, its image and its tourism reality. Serious names in the architectural world were asked to participate. What happened? Nothing.
If, as non-architects, you were to be asked for your architectural prescription for Magalluf's future, it might not get much further than calling in the wrecking crews, but this would be unfair in light of changes already undertaken or in progress in the resort. Indeed, because of these changes, one has to ask if Magalluf is a suitable subject. But your response would probably be one based on something other than architecture, i.e. the resort's poor reputation. Architecture and urban planning can and do determine social behaviour, but Magalluf is not so different, in architectural terms, to other resorts: in fact, because of the recent developments, it is somewhat better than many.
Magalluf was the last of Calvia's main tourism centres to receive the green light for development: it wasn't definitively given until 1959. By then Santa Ponsa and Palmanova were already under development, Paguera's plan had been approved, while Illetes had undergone limited hotel construction (or re-construction) from the late 1940s. Illetes is, in this regard, instructive. When the Maricel was originally built, replacing the previous Cas Català, it conformed to an architectural design, conceived by the Mallorcan Francisco Casas, which owed much to the Mallorcan manor house and it was in line with design thinking of the time. It is one of the great ironies of tourism in Mallorca that, as the island attempts a reinvention of resorts, the model of the 1950s prior to the economic necessity of mass tourism was a hotel like the Maricel and a tranquil spot such as Illetes. This style of hotel was itself a successor to the likes of the Formentor and, much earlier, Palma's Gran Hotel. Architecture was, therefore, conceived with a certain social behaviour in mind: that of the wealthy, the more refined and sophisticated.
The tourism boom shattered all this and introduced a tourism that was neither refined nor sophisticated. The resorts and their hotels complemented their guests. Architecturally, this meant a form of touristic Brutalism. Urban layouts, while many adhered to blueprints from the 1930s of a garden-city nature (like in Santa Ponsa), were compromised by the need for construction which overwhelmed design principles for greater environmental and human co-existence harmony. Tourists, innocents abroad and mostly unfamiliar with alternatives, accepted this Brutalism, as did residents, many of them incomers: the resort workers.
It is interesting to note that tourist and resident co-existence is a factor in the workshop's considerations, because little attention was paid to such a thing when the resorts were springing up. Had there been, there might have been alternative urban planning, as was the case with French resorts that were specifically for tourists. These enclaves can be criticised for being tourist ghettoes, removed from the local community, but they have certain advantages in reducing the potential for resident-tourist conflict. Nevertheless, resorts, in an ideal world, should be places where tourist and resident mingle together in cultural interplay, and some do conform to this ideal better than others, as might be said to be the case with Puerto Pollensa, for instance. But then Puerto Pollensa wasn't an artificial resort. It grew organically rather than out of nothing or very little, and its architecture, even today, for the most part reflects this.
The ideal of cultural interplay, the bringing together of peoples from different nations in peace through tourism, was one that tourism visionaries had: Horizon's Vladimir Raitz, for example. But this didn't happen because of the artificial nature of resorts such as Magalluf and because of the demand for the British bar or the German kneipe. Subsequently, this ideal has been made even more untenable thanks to the all-inclusive.
Though Magalluf has experienced its improvements, the negative legacy of architectural and urban planning, exacerbated by Calvia's 1971 general urban plan and expansion which followed, most definitely remains. But so it does in other resorts. As a case study, the architectural students might come up with some solutions, but it is not just Magalluf which needs one. There again, we have been here before. In 2000, the then government embarked upon a three-year cycle of activities to bring forth architectural ideas for Mallorca's future, its image and its tourism reality. Serious names in the architectural world were asked to participate. What happened? Nothing.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
The Bullrings Of Mallorca
There was another bullring in Pollensa. In the old town itself. It now forms part of the grounds of a property that would doubtless cost a pretty penny or several. It wasn't so far from the Plaça Major, but it, like the bullring in the port, disappeared years ago. From what can be made out, maybe the port's bullring was the more important of the two. It's hard to say.
One understands that there are quite a number of bullrings in Spain which have disappeared over the years, but research into those which may have existed in Mallorca has proved fruitless. Maybe there were others. Maybe there weren't. If anyone knows, my curiosity would be grateful for any information. What is known and is well chronicled is the history of the five bullrings that still exist - those in Palma, Inca, Alcúdia, Muro and Felanitx.
Of these five, the Felanitx one, La Macarena, has fallen into a pretty poor state. It has been closed for safety reasons since 2009. Its owner wishes to sell it but no one seems interested in buying it. It is exactly one hundred years old this year, there having been a previous bullring that had opened in 1891.
Palma has had a bullring since 1865. Its replacement, the Coliseum, staged its inaugural bullfight on 21 July, 1929. The desire for a replacement had existed for a good number of years before the Coliseum opened but the First World War put any new project on the back-burner, as did opposition from Palma town hall for several years in the 1920s. When the go-ahead was given, in 1928, the new bullring took only nine months to be built, an astonishingly short period of time. All was ready for the inauguration, and the anticipation was apparently enormous. Twenty trams that operated what was a new route to the bullring were packed. Practically every car that was registered in Mallorca was seemingly parked nearby.
The following Sunday, the action switched to Inca and to an occurrence which shocked the whole of Mallorca. Reports suggest that the shocked population all turned out to see the coffin of Angel Celdrán Carratalá being placed on a ship in Palma to take his body back to his native Alicante. He had received fatal wounds to his stomach from the bull.
Inca's bullring is older than Palma's. It was inaugurated in September 1910. The local rail service put on special trains to bring people in from Palma. Inca, so it would seem, had never experienced anything quite like this. The streets were crowded from early in the morning. The bars were packed. Sobrassada, botifarrones, tortillas were gorged. Wine was drunk in great volume.
Another bullring, Alcúdia's, is older than Inca's. It dates from 1892. Muro's, "La Monumental", was built on the site of a quarry and completed in 1918. It is the largest in terms of numbers of spectators apart from Palma's Coliseum.
Looking back at reports of the inaugurations of the Inca and Palma bullrings, one is struck by how popular the bullfights were. From a contemporary perspective, it might seem shocking. But it wasn't as though there was total support. Much of the opposition came from the so-called Generación del 98, which drew its name from the calamitous events of 1898 when Spain lost the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico and Cuba. The bullfight was viewed as evidence of Spain's backwardness. The writer and philosopher Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo said that he was disgusted by the bullfight.
Society's attitudes have clearly changed markedly since the days when Inca could be bursting at the seams with excited bullfight-goers. While the legitimacy of the bullfight as part of Spain's patrimony is rightly brought into question, there is the separate patrimony of the architectural legacy that goes with it. The Coliseum, for example, built so rapidly from Mallorcan stone and in a neo-classical style, should not be devalued because of what occurs behind that stone. Likewise, La Macarena deserves to be preserved, while the memories of the lost bullrings need to be reactivated, if only to emphasise just how much attitudes have changed.
Note: Many thanks indeed to Lyn at the www.puertopollensa.com forum for letting me know that the Puerto Pollensa bullring had been discussed some years ago on the forum and that its location was placed as having been near to what is now the Eroski roundabout (the one with the Canadair sculpture).
Friday, November 09, 2012
The Jerry-Built Front Line: Can Picafort
Not all of the front line is uniformly in kit form, some of it is even quite attractive (all things being relative of course), but many of the bars and restaurants have been constructed (a word used in its widest and most liberal sense) from a design that does disservice to the word design. There isn't any in other words, other than the build-by-numbers approach of large floor space with usually brownish tiles (to disguise sand no doubt) enclosed by aluminium-framed glass windows. There is some disruption to this monotony - the use of wood for example - but otherwise Can Picafort's front line pays homage to a kind of Henry Fordist principle. Rather than any colour so long as it's black, it's a case of any type of restaurant so long as it imitates a barn with all the character of unicolorific mono-dimensionality.
I once read a short review of Can Picafort in which the reviewer referred to its "Spanishness". So surprised was I by this that I was prompted into writing an entire series of articles that attempted to define Spanishness. If Can Pic's front line is indeed representative of Spanishness, it is one that has been imported and moulded according to a cultural imperialism that re-draws whole landscapes and architectures. There is a feel of the English seaside, a chav traccie-bottomness, an understated presence of lowlife, a Jack-the-lad fairground dodgemness and Hyacinth Bucket B&B landlady pretensions of social class way above actual status.
Such Spanishness is there that the names of the restaurants are internationalised. Niagara, Jamaica, Hawaii, Chocolate. It is the anytown, anyresort approach. Front line like an industrial estate of unit homogeneity.
However, I have a penchant for industrial sites as I also have a penchant for the kitsch, the camp, the kiss-me-quick, the post-modernist naffness of much seaside. It's why I defend Alcúdia's Mile. Yes, it is pretty abominable, but this is why I like it. The irony is that from the apparent veneer of a lack of character, character comes tumbling out. It is an example of making something out of nothing. The nothingness of architecture creates a vacuum. And as vacuums are abhorred, something has to fill them.
Can Pic's front line is similar. A lack of ostentatiousness breeds an honesty and a seaside integrity. It is seaside for purpose, not for show. Front lines adorned with the chic have an untouchable aloofness. They are to be admired rather than enjoyed. They are like the show houses that some choose to live in, those which demand you remove your shoes before even crossing the threshold. They are not built for comfort but for esteem.
In the agenda of the regional government's desire for resorts to be modernised, you would have to place Can Pic's front line very near the top of the list. But there is a reason why it conveys the impression of much of it having been jerry-built. This is because it has been. The beach is not deep in Can Picafort, so the sea is close. And in this part of the bay of Alcúdia, the beach and the front line are totally exposed. Buildings themselves are exposed to inherent design faults, not just of a lack of design but of having been plonked on what used to be there to protect the coast from the full force of nature - the dunes.
Though efforts have been made to stop or to reduce the flooding and the sand being hurled inland in winter, the proximity of the front line to the sea determines the nature of its constructed inhabitants. It is front line therefore with an additional purpose - one of not being so daft as to put something up of sophisticated opulence that is going to be given a thorough beating by the weather and by nature.
Of course, they should never have put the front line where it is. Even the maddest of urban planners must now concede this point. But it is where it is and it's not going away.
In winter, Can Pic's front line is stripped of any hint of grandeur. Yet it isn't without a splendid fascination that comes from being unremarkable. Yesterday morning it was all but empty. But it is emptiness which allows you to see somewhere as it really is.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Tourism On An Industrial Scale
"Zone industrielle." Despite my insistence that we make a detour, we never got to see any industrial zones. This was at the end of the 1970s. In the Dordogne. My wish to take in some industry was vetoed in favour of the hunting out of a chateau or several.
Winemaking is industry, but it's not the sort of industry that I had in mind back then. I wanted to see plant, machinery, things that went clank and made noise and mess. I was an industrial tourist, without ever having heard the term and without ever managing to become one; not then at any rate.
Industrial tourism is growing. There is a European congress devoted to it; the fourth gathering will be in Portugal next year. The European Tourism Day, celebrated at the end of September, concentrated on the promotion of industrial heritage and on how it can contribute to the diversification of tourism in general.
The growth in interest is to be welcomed. But unfortunately, much which goes under the term industrial tourism simply gets shunted into a museum. Sometimes workings are preserved or simulated, but for me the far greater interest lies in the industrial sites themselves, whether they be in ruin or maintained.
Spain does quite well when it comes to industrial tourism; Toledo, for example, is a major centre. The French do it rather better than the Spanish, and not just in a town's local "zone industrielle". Every year some 20 million people visit 1400 sites and museums of different sorts. Sadly, Mallorca doesn't have much to offer. Or rather, it has quite a bit, just that no one much knows about it and next to nothing is done to let them know about it.
Mallorca's forgotten industrial past sounds like a contradiction. The island's industry, pre-tourism, was predominantly agricultural, but by no means exclusively. There is a charity, the Foundation for the Recuperation and Study of Balearics Rail and Industrial Heritage, that attempts to promote the island's forgotten industry, which, at the start of the 1950s, involved some 35% of the population working in factories producing the likes of chemicals.
Most towns have evidence of old industry, if you look hard enough. Some of it has fallen into a poor state, such as the carpet factory in Pollensa. Closed in 1960 and posing a danger as it might collapse at any time, the town hall wants it declassified as an "asset of cultural interest", so that it can be demolished and then rebuilt. This would be a shame. Far better would be to perform restoration work and then promote it as a site of tourism interest. But of course no one's got any money to do anything with it.
Elsewhere on the island there are disused mineworks - in Alaró and Felanitx. Though mining dates back to the start of the nineteenth century, it was stopped until the Franco years, and the mineworks are evidence of the economic strategy of self-sufficiency (autarky) that for many years Franco sought for Spain.
But you don't necessarily have to go hunting for such sites. In Lloseta, for example, you can hardly miss the giant cement works. Not that this is disused. It benefits from using coal ash from the Es Murterar power station by the Albufera nature park, the power station that took over from the old one in Puerto Alcúdia and which has been all but abandoned for years.
The old power station, though, is arguably Mallorca's foremost industrial site. It has been named among the one hundred most important industrial heritage sites in Spain; it was symbolic of Mallorca's more recent industrial development in the 1950s, which is when it was constructed.
Plans to convert the power station into a museum have fallen foul of economic crisis. These plans, if they are ever indeed realised, are sympathetic to the architecture. The chimneys, for example, would be preserved. Though it can be argued that the power station forms something of a blot on the landscape on the sweep of Alcúdia Bay, its main structures should stay. Indeed, it should all stay.
If finance is going to be such an issue for its re-development, and it is going to be, then consideration might be given to a less ambitious scheme; one by which the site is made into one of tourism interest and is open to visitors. It could also include a museum, but on a smaller scale, one devoted to the history of the power station and to all the forgotten industrial heritage of Mallorca.
Industrial tourism is growing, Mallorca has little of it, so why not create some.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Winemaking is industry, but it's not the sort of industry that I had in mind back then. I wanted to see plant, machinery, things that went clank and made noise and mess. I was an industrial tourist, without ever having heard the term and without ever managing to become one; not then at any rate.
Industrial tourism is growing. There is a European congress devoted to it; the fourth gathering will be in Portugal next year. The European Tourism Day, celebrated at the end of September, concentrated on the promotion of industrial heritage and on how it can contribute to the diversification of tourism in general.
The growth in interest is to be welcomed. But unfortunately, much which goes under the term industrial tourism simply gets shunted into a museum. Sometimes workings are preserved or simulated, but for me the far greater interest lies in the industrial sites themselves, whether they be in ruin or maintained.
Spain does quite well when it comes to industrial tourism; Toledo, for example, is a major centre. The French do it rather better than the Spanish, and not just in a town's local "zone industrielle". Every year some 20 million people visit 1400 sites and museums of different sorts. Sadly, Mallorca doesn't have much to offer. Or rather, it has quite a bit, just that no one much knows about it and next to nothing is done to let them know about it.
Mallorca's forgotten industrial past sounds like a contradiction. The island's industry, pre-tourism, was predominantly agricultural, but by no means exclusively. There is a charity, the Foundation for the Recuperation and Study of Balearics Rail and Industrial Heritage, that attempts to promote the island's forgotten industry, which, at the start of the 1950s, involved some 35% of the population working in factories producing the likes of chemicals.
Most towns have evidence of old industry, if you look hard enough. Some of it has fallen into a poor state, such as the carpet factory in Pollensa. Closed in 1960 and posing a danger as it might collapse at any time, the town hall wants it declassified as an "asset of cultural interest", so that it can be demolished and then rebuilt. This would be a shame. Far better would be to perform restoration work and then promote it as a site of tourism interest. But of course no one's got any money to do anything with it.
Elsewhere on the island there are disused mineworks - in Alaró and Felanitx. Though mining dates back to the start of the nineteenth century, it was stopped until the Franco years, and the mineworks are evidence of the economic strategy of self-sufficiency (autarky) that for many years Franco sought for Spain.
But you don't necessarily have to go hunting for such sites. In Lloseta, for example, you can hardly miss the giant cement works. Not that this is disused. It benefits from using coal ash from the Es Murterar power station by the Albufera nature park, the power station that took over from the old one in Puerto Alcúdia and which has been all but abandoned for years.
The old power station, though, is arguably Mallorca's foremost industrial site. It has been named among the one hundred most important industrial heritage sites in Spain; it was symbolic of Mallorca's more recent industrial development in the 1950s, which is when it was constructed.
Plans to convert the power station into a museum have fallen foul of economic crisis. These plans, if they are ever indeed realised, are sympathetic to the architecture. The chimneys, for example, would be preserved. Though it can be argued that the power station forms something of a blot on the landscape on the sweep of Alcúdia Bay, its main structures should stay. Indeed, it should all stay.
If finance is going to be such an issue for its re-development, and it is going to be, then consideration might be given to a less ambitious scheme; one by which the site is made into one of tourism interest and is open to visitors. It could also include a museum, but on a smaller scale, one devoted to the history of the power station and to all the forgotten industrial heritage of Mallorca.
Industrial tourism is growing, Mallorca has little of it, so why not create some.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
In A Wrong Place: Architecture
Alcúdia has some old ruins, and not just the Roman ones.
The long-abandoned Es Foguero nightclub has been home to vagrants and was the last resting-place of one: "El Gallego", who was murdered there last summer. Even longer-abandoned is the original power station, the two chimneys of which stand less than proud on the landscape of the bay of Alcúdia.
The site of GESA's former power station is meant to become a museum of science and technology. The cost has been put at 21 million euros.
In October 2007, a Pamplona-based architects practice, Alonso Hernández y Asociados, beat off competition from the likes of the Millennium Dome designer, Lord Rogers, in winning the pitch for the conversion of the site. The architects promised a concept called "el claro en el bosque" - the clearing in the forest.
What has since happened is that some clearance work has been undertaken, not directly related to the museum. The science and technology clearing in the forest may now never be built.
A year after the award to the Pamplona firm, there was a presentation of what the museum might be. It was made in Alcúdia's auditorium. A presentation is as much as there has ever been. Even then it was being admitted that the finance for the project was not in place, and it still isn't.
Economic crisis has caused a rethink of many public developments. If it causes there to be more thought applied to both the necessity and the architecture of some of these developments, then it will have been worth enduring.
There is some really rotten architecture in Mallorca, most of it contemporary. It is not rotten per se, but it is rotten because it has no sense of place. We might not ever know what the clearing in the forest will finally be like, but the inspiration was said to have come from the Tate Modern, the converted Bankside Power Station on London's South Bank. Would this be appropriate for a tourist location on a bay of some not little outstanding beauty?
The auditorium was an apt building in which to hold the presentation of the museum. The puff maintains that the auditorium is of contemporary design. It may well be, but contemporary doesn't mean remarkable, and this the auditorium most certainly isn't. Moreover, it reflects in no way the historic walls of the town which stand opposite, while it has never operated at anything like capacity.
Similarly, the Can Ramis building in Alcúdia's market square suffers from being under-utilised and from being a totally alien structure. Like much new residential architecture and an absurd building that has risen right on Pollensa's Plaça Major and next to the church, it is symptomatic of how architects have seen the future - it is block-shaped and cuboidal.
Contemporary design does not have to be a mélange of competing styles. Anyone familiar with Bath's SouthGate Centre will know that it is possible to merge the new with the old almost seamlessly, while still creating a highly modern feel, so much so that you have the impression of walking through a computer simulation.
Questionable both in design and in purpose. This has been the problem with some local building development. In the same way, so have other projects. Industrial estates, for example. Pollensa's is far from full. In Alcúdia, the layout was finished a couple of years ago. It stands empty and now blocked to access. The official reason why it is empty has to do with a failure to arrive at agreement over electricity supply, which is ironic, given that it is next to the current power station.
The fact is that some developments are simply unnecessary. Pollensa wants its own auditorium, but why build one when Alcúdia has one with spare capacity? It all comes down to me-too need and suspicions that there might be other factors at play.
The empty industrial estate is next to the Es Foguero ruin, one that became so largely because it was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The project for the old power station has suffered because the time was wrong. Were the museum to be built, it would still, because its design would retain the landscape-offensive chimneys, be in the wrong place. And in the wrong place is where other buildings now are, or they are just plain wrong because they are not needed.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The long-abandoned Es Foguero nightclub has been home to vagrants and was the last resting-place of one: "El Gallego", who was murdered there last summer. Even longer-abandoned is the original power station, the two chimneys of which stand less than proud on the landscape of the bay of Alcúdia.
The site of GESA's former power station is meant to become a museum of science and technology. The cost has been put at 21 million euros.
In October 2007, a Pamplona-based architects practice, Alonso Hernández y Asociados, beat off competition from the likes of the Millennium Dome designer, Lord Rogers, in winning the pitch for the conversion of the site. The architects promised a concept called "el claro en el bosque" - the clearing in the forest.
What has since happened is that some clearance work has been undertaken, not directly related to the museum. The science and technology clearing in the forest may now never be built.
A year after the award to the Pamplona firm, there was a presentation of what the museum might be. It was made in Alcúdia's auditorium. A presentation is as much as there has ever been. Even then it was being admitted that the finance for the project was not in place, and it still isn't.
Economic crisis has caused a rethink of many public developments. If it causes there to be more thought applied to both the necessity and the architecture of some of these developments, then it will have been worth enduring.
There is some really rotten architecture in Mallorca, most of it contemporary. It is not rotten per se, but it is rotten because it has no sense of place. We might not ever know what the clearing in the forest will finally be like, but the inspiration was said to have come from the Tate Modern, the converted Bankside Power Station on London's South Bank. Would this be appropriate for a tourist location on a bay of some not little outstanding beauty?
The auditorium was an apt building in which to hold the presentation of the museum. The puff maintains that the auditorium is of contemporary design. It may well be, but contemporary doesn't mean remarkable, and this the auditorium most certainly isn't. Moreover, it reflects in no way the historic walls of the town which stand opposite, while it has never operated at anything like capacity.
Similarly, the Can Ramis building in Alcúdia's market square suffers from being under-utilised and from being a totally alien structure. Like much new residential architecture and an absurd building that has risen right on Pollensa's Plaça Major and next to the church, it is symptomatic of how architects have seen the future - it is block-shaped and cuboidal.
Contemporary design does not have to be a mélange of competing styles. Anyone familiar with Bath's SouthGate Centre will know that it is possible to merge the new with the old almost seamlessly, while still creating a highly modern feel, so much so that you have the impression of walking through a computer simulation.
Questionable both in design and in purpose. This has been the problem with some local building development. In the same way, so have other projects. Industrial estates, for example. Pollensa's is far from full. In Alcúdia, the layout was finished a couple of years ago. It stands empty and now blocked to access. The official reason why it is empty has to do with a failure to arrive at agreement over electricity supply, which is ironic, given that it is next to the current power station.
The fact is that some developments are simply unnecessary. Pollensa wants its own auditorium, but why build one when Alcúdia has one with spare capacity? It all comes down to me-too need and suspicions that there might be other factors at play.
The empty industrial estate is next to the Es Foguero ruin, one that became so largely because it was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The project for the old power station has suffered because the time was wrong. Were the museum to be built, it would still, because its design would retain the landscape-offensive chimneys, be in the wrong place. And in the wrong place is where other buildings now are, or they are just plain wrong because they are not needed.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
The Wrecking Crew: Knocking GESA down
What do you do with a rubbish building that is as unloved as it is unlovely? The obvious answer is to knock it down. But unfortunately, the obvious is all too rarely considered in the pursuit of some bonkers creation of "emblems".
The GESA monstrosity in Palma, empty for over two years, took, in all, ten years to construct. I claim no expertise in matters of demolition, but ten minutes might be sufficient to raze much of the damn thing, to put it and anyone obliged to look at it out of their misery.
I am not fundamentally against preserving lousy architecture. Some has a certain idiosyncratic charm, but the GESA building has no redeeming feature. It has no art-deco curiosity, it is not representative of some intrinsically important patrimony; it's an office building, that's all it is. Yet it is, absurdly, meant to be preserved.
You can't necessarily trust everything an architect might say - one was, after all, responsible for the GESA building in the first place - but Patxi Mangado, an architect originally involved with the development of the Palacio de Congresos, by which the GESA building will remain, once a) expressed his surprise that it was still there and b) suggested that it should be pulled down.
So much for common sense though. Instead, we have the situation in which ideas are being tossed into the pot to find the maddest of them to justify the building's continuing existence. In addition to previous proposals for an auditorium and restaurant, the latest, coming from the co-ordinator of youth activities at the town hall, is that part of the building should be given over to so-called "self-management" whereby several floors would be devoted to youthful artistic endeavours and workshops and a cultural association for showing off whatever work or projects these endeavours might yield.
There is nothing wrong with this idea at all, apart from one thing: locating it in the GESA building. The lack of empathy between a brutalist, early 60s-designed office block and current-day, dreadlocked art and craft is extreme. Furthermore, no one seems to be mentioning how this "self-management" might be paid for, as in, for instance, where the money for the building's energy would come from. Perhaps GESA should offer to give something back and supply electricity for free.
The bizarre language that surrounds the building, that used by those who seem determined for it to stay, is no better summed up than by this youth activities' co-ordinator who reckons that "sociocultural self-management" would make the GESA block "an emblematic enclave of the city".
Here we go again, stuff that isn't emblematic, as with, for instance, the building of a new road through Playa de Muro, suddenly becomes so. The GESA building is emblematic of one thing and one thing alone - office building design and not very good design at that. The other main suggestion, that it houses offices, is the only sensible one to have been advanced, for the very simple reason that this is exactly why it was ever built.
The rationalisation that is currently going on is weird. There are plenty of buildings in Palma which are emblematic, the Cathedral for example, but to claim that GESA is one of them is to imply that Palma is emblematic of naff commercial architecture. It's not exactly what the tourist brochures might wish to boast of, though heaven knows they probably will, unless the Partido Popular secure the town hall administration in May and do as they have promised, which is to send in the bulldozers.
What you do with old GESA offices and plant is not confined to Palma. The de-commissioned power station in Alcúdia, idle for years, is meant at some stage to become a science and technology museum. The architectural tendering for its re-development, which brought with it a fair degree of publicity, largely because Lord Rogers was up for the gig, resulted in the plan that is currently as idle as the power station itself. There's no money in other words.
This may well be a blessing. If it means the museum never seeing the light of day, we might all be spared the waste of money it would be. As with the GESA building, the power station deserves being knocked down. In its place should go a Center Parcs or something of genuine tourist appeal. But this would never happen because it wouldn't be emblematic. Consequently, the chimneys, at the very least, have to remain and to remain the blots on the landscape as one scans the bay of Alcúdia and spies these two long-impotent erections (if this isn't a contradiction in terms).
As with some commercial buildings, I am in favour of preserving some old industrial architecture. But whereas a power-station chimney or two or four might look ok in an urban landscape, London's for example, the same cannot be claimed for the vista across a bay in a tourism zone that is meant to be renowned for its natural beauty. If chimneys are what you want, there is one anyway; that of the power station by Albufera that took over from the one in Puerto Alcúdia.
Both the GESA building and old power station are emblematic, or symptomatic to be more accurate; symptomatic of confused notions of architectural preservation which insist, firstly, that heritage exists where it does not and, secondly, that scenery is enhanced when it most certainly isn't.
It's all very obvious, or should be. Bring on the wrecking crew and the explosives.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The GESA monstrosity in Palma, empty for over two years, took, in all, ten years to construct. I claim no expertise in matters of demolition, but ten minutes might be sufficient to raze much of the damn thing, to put it and anyone obliged to look at it out of their misery.
I am not fundamentally against preserving lousy architecture. Some has a certain idiosyncratic charm, but the GESA building has no redeeming feature. It has no art-deco curiosity, it is not representative of some intrinsically important patrimony; it's an office building, that's all it is. Yet it is, absurdly, meant to be preserved.
You can't necessarily trust everything an architect might say - one was, after all, responsible for the GESA building in the first place - but Patxi Mangado, an architect originally involved with the development of the Palacio de Congresos, by which the GESA building will remain, once a) expressed his surprise that it was still there and b) suggested that it should be pulled down.
So much for common sense though. Instead, we have the situation in which ideas are being tossed into the pot to find the maddest of them to justify the building's continuing existence. In addition to previous proposals for an auditorium and restaurant, the latest, coming from the co-ordinator of youth activities at the town hall, is that part of the building should be given over to so-called "self-management" whereby several floors would be devoted to youthful artistic endeavours and workshops and a cultural association for showing off whatever work or projects these endeavours might yield.
There is nothing wrong with this idea at all, apart from one thing: locating it in the GESA building. The lack of empathy between a brutalist, early 60s-designed office block and current-day, dreadlocked art and craft is extreme. Furthermore, no one seems to be mentioning how this "self-management" might be paid for, as in, for instance, where the money for the building's energy would come from. Perhaps GESA should offer to give something back and supply electricity for free.
The bizarre language that surrounds the building, that used by those who seem determined for it to stay, is no better summed up than by this youth activities' co-ordinator who reckons that "sociocultural self-management" would make the GESA block "an emblematic enclave of the city".
Here we go again, stuff that isn't emblematic, as with, for instance, the building of a new road through Playa de Muro, suddenly becomes so. The GESA building is emblematic of one thing and one thing alone - office building design and not very good design at that. The other main suggestion, that it houses offices, is the only sensible one to have been advanced, for the very simple reason that this is exactly why it was ever built.
The rationalisation that is currently going on is weird. There are plenty of buildings in Palma which are emblematic, the Cathedral for example, but to claim that GESA is one of them is to imply that Palma is emblematic of naff commercial architecture. It's not exactly what the tourist brochures might wish to boast of, though heaven knows they probably will, unless the Partido Popular secure the town hall administration in May and do as they have promised, which is to send in the bulldozers.
What you do with old GESA offices and plant is not confined to Palma. The de-commissioned power station in Alcúdia, idle for years, is meant at some stage to become a science and technology museum. The architectural tendering for its re-development, which brought with it a fair degree of publicity, largely because Lord Rogers was up for the gig, resulted in the plan that is currently as idle as the power station itself. There's no money in other words.
This may well be a blessing. If it means the museum never seeing the light of day, we might all be spared the waste of money it would be. As with the GESA building, the power station deserves being knocked down. In its place should go a Center Parcs or something of genuine tourist appeal. But this would never happen because it wouldn't be emblematic. Consequently, the chimneys, at the very least, have to remain and to remain the blots on the landscape as one scans the bay of Alcúdia and spies these two long-impotent erections (if this isn't a contradiction in terms).
As with some commercial buildings, I am in favour of preserving some old industrial architecture. But whereas a power-station chimney or two or four might look ok in an urban landscape, London's for example, the same cannot be claimed for the vista across a bay in a tourism zone that is meant to be renowned for its natural beauty. If chimneys are what you want, there is one anyway; that of the power station by Albufera that took over from the one in Puerto Alcúdia.
Both the GESA building and old power station are emblematic, or symptomatic to be more accurate; symptomatic of confused notions of architectural preservation which insist, firstly, that heritage exists where it does not and, secondly, that scenery is enhanced when it most certainly isn't.
It's all very obvious, or should be. Bring on the wrecking crew and the explosives.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The Charm Offence: Sóller and resort development
When you're about to spend the best part of two and a half million euros on a construction project, you might hope that someone had first checked that the whole thing wouldn't collapse or be inundated with water. What am I saying? The recent history of great Mallorcan civil engineering success stories is awash with water. The Palma Metro for example.
Along now comes another rail fiasco which we can all rail against. "The tram now standing at platform ..." Sorry, there is no platform. As also there are no proper foundations, other than sand, or adequate drainage. As for the tram, well you can forget that anyway, as they've forgotten about the supports for the power cables. Oh, and that bike lane, the one that would have been vital because the tramline had been knackered ... .? Nope, they haven't remembered that either.
Work on the re-development of the paseo marítimo in Port de Sóller, tram and all, is due to start in October. Somewhat belatedly, the technical chaps have had a peek at the plans. What plans, you might ask. There are "deficiencies", they say. Just ever so slightly there are. One of the companies contracted to undertake the work states on its website: "development is a reality". As far as Sóller is concerned, that should read, "will be" - with any luck. When though is another matter.
The Sóller promenade development can be viewed in a wider context than just the apparent deficiencies with the project. Bar and restaurant owners in the resort are none too impressed with the scheme. Ditto the on-off and now maybe on again re-development of Puerto Pollensa's frontline. Pedestrianisation may seem like a way of beautifying Mallorca's resorts, but strange to report there are plenty of people who would disagree.
An editorial in "The Bulletin" referred to a loss of charm, the consequence of resort developments. One aspect of this charm is that some tourists quite enjoy the bustle that having a road right next to a bar or restaurant can create. So too the owners. It may seem odd to wish to breathe in the fumes of a bus that has mysteriously passed its MOT, but who am I to question what anyone finds charming?
Some years ago Puerto Alcúdia's prom was pedestrianised. What was created was a spacious strolling boulevard, wide enough to house the capricious folly of a bridge that goes nowhere, an Escher-like impossible reality. The development wasn't a reality in Alcúdia, it was surrealistic, while the spaciousness is not to everyone's liking; visitors still talk of that "bustle" and charm which existed previously. There will probably be those who reject the Playa de Palma re-development on the same grounds, though how somewhere lacking charm can lose it is a moot point.
Playa de Palma, though, is a specific case, one in which there is now a collision between civil engineers, town planners and architects like no other resort. This was where the architectural vandals once scaled the ramparts and sacked the place before anyone was any the wiser. What comes now is important. The New Turkey perhaps? A resort for today's competitive age? One of dome and semi-circular five-star opulence would be in keeping with a Moorish inheritance, and would be an appropriate artifice for an artificial resort, which is exactly what it is. Everything in its place.
But this is the problem. Not everything is in its place, especially building design. It's not just the resorts. The Can Ramis monstrosity in Alcúdia town is an example of how bad unsympathetic architecture can be. It was the misfortune of the little Ramis houses that they were situated only metres from the sanctuary of the town's walls, behind which is a heritage law that would have stopped their functionalist conversion in its tracks.
The argument goes, of course, that Mallorca has to upgrade to compete. It's a fair argument, but only up to a point. The pedestrianisation dogma is not the same as creating new four- or five-star hotels. In Puerto Alcúdia's case, has the paseo made any difference to tourism competitiveness? Doubtful. But over and above a prom in this or that resort is an orthodoxy of today's school of architecture which has, for example, succeeded in undermining the ramshackle appeal of Cala San Vicente.
Sóller, Pollensa, Andratx, you can name others. They have thrived on their individual, idiosyncratic charms. But they face the offence of the "new" charm. In Sóller, maybe a botched project wouldn't be such a bad thing.
QUIZ -
Yesterday: Fleetwood Mac, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE4HGlmtOcg
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Along now comes another rail fiasco which we can all rail against. "The tram now standing at platform ..." Sorry, there is no platform. As also there are no proper foundations, other than sand, or adequate drainage. As for the tram, well you can forget that anyway, as they've forgotten about the supports for the power cables. Oh, and that bike lane, the one that would have been vital because the tramline had been knackered ... .? Nope, they haven't remembered that either.
Work on the re-development of the paseo marítimo in Port de Sóller, tram and all, is due to start in October. Somewhat belatedly, the technical chaps have had a peek at the plans. What plans, you might ask. There are "deficiencies", they say. Just ever so slightly there are. One of the companies contracted to undertake the work states on its website: "development is a reality". As far as Sóller is concerned, that should read, "will be" - with any luck. When though is another matter.
The Sóller promenade development can be viewed in a wider context than just the apparent deficiencies with the project. Bar and restaurant owners in the resort are none too impressed with the scheme. Ditto the on-off and now maybe on again re-development of Puerto Pollensa's frontline. Pedestrianisation may seem like a way of beautifying Mallorca's resorts, but strange to report there are plenty of people who would disagree.
An editorial in "The Bulletin" referred to a loss of charm, the consequence of resort developments. One aspect of this charm is that some tourists quite enjoy the bustle that having a road right next to a bar or restaurant can create. So too the owners. It may seem odd to wish to breathe in the fumes of a bus that has mysteriously passed its MOT, but who am I to question what anyone finds charming?
Some years ago Puerto Alcúdia's prom was pedestrianised. What was created was a spacious strolling boulevard, wide enough to house the capricious folly of a bridge that goes nowhere, an Escher-like impossible reality. The development wasn't a reality in Alcúdia, it was surrealistic, while the spaciousness is not to everyone's liking; visitors still talk of that "bustle" and charm which existed previously. There will probably be those who reject the Playa de Palma re-development on the same grounds, though how somewhere lacking charm can lose it is a moot point.
Playa de Palma, though, is a specific case, one in which there is now a collision between civil engineers, town planners and architects like no other resort. This was where the architectural vandals once scaled the ramparts and sacked the place before anyone was any the wiser. What comes now is important. The New Turkey perhaps? A resort for today's competitive age? One of dome and semi-circular five-star opulence would be in keeping with a Moorish inheritance, and would be an appropriate artifice for an artificial resort, which is exactly what it is. Everything in its place.
But this is the problem. Not everything is in its place, especially building design. It's not just the resorts. The Can Ramis monstrosity in Alcúdia town is an example of how bad unsympathetic architecture can be. It was the misfortune of the little Ramis houses that they were situated only metres from the sanctuary of the town's walls, behind which is a heritage law that would have stopped their functionalist conversion in its tracks.
The argument goes, of course, that Mallorca has to upgrade to compete. It's a fair argument, but only up to a point. The pedestrianisation dogma is not the same as creating new four- or five-star hotels. In Puerto Alcúdia's case, has the paseo made any difference to tourism competitiveness? Doubtful. But over and above a prom in this or that resort is an orthodoxy of today's school of architecture which has, for example, succeeded in undermining the ramshackle appeal of Cala San Vicente.
Sóller, Pollensa, Andratx, you can name others. They have thrived on their individual, idiosyncratic charms. But they face the offence of the "new" charm. In Sóller, maybe a botched project wouldn't be such a bad thing.
QUIZ -
Yesterday: Fleetwood Mac, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE4HGlmtOcg
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Living In A Box (Re-mix): Architecture in Alcúdia
The quadratic affront to the eye that is the Can Ramis building in Alcúdia old town (12 December: Toy Story - The Can Ramis Building) is an insult of non-contextual brutalism. But it is, after all, only a public building, one forged from functionalism. Nevertheless, it has no redeeming feature when placed against the neo-Gothic of historical buildings, those classified in terms of local "patrimonio" (heritage, to you and me). The straight lines, the vertical and horizontal, the wood, glass and steel form a passionless abscess-in-a-box of royal proportions - "Carlos Carbunculis".
There is, one has to presume, a whole school of what we might call the new architecture, or what might more accurately be described as Blockism. This Blockist tendency has infiltrated the residential domain, giving rise to and making rise up a cubist collectivist, close-to-communist conformity of form for housing. It might look in place in some post-modernist new town, but in Alcúdia? In Mallorca? A local fascination with and often brilliance with art and graphics has combined the old, the more recent (post-impressionism in art, for example) and the contemporary in fashioning painting, sculpture and design, but the architecture of "now" has turned its back on the vividness of colour and the diversity of cottage, villa and Moorish shapes in creating a Blockist, soulless landscape. Residential housing has been boxed in by the box of a group-thought architectural design authoritarianism, the fascism of the cuboidal, and most of it divested of primary or strong colours.
In Puerto Alcúdia, there is a new development by the Eroski supermarket and on the edge of the Lago Esperanza. It is indicative of this new conformism, one that has sprouted a pre-fabism, spawned by a computer-based template and using the rotate tool to move left, right, up or down. It has been finished off with what looks like a gradient effect from Photoshop. It is Adobe end-of-terrace. It is also redolent of sixties and seventies British town centres or council estates - the national mural of Brent, tiles of competing browns, greys and what may even be blues that looks ripe for some graffiti artist to complement. New, this "artistic" adjunct may look acceptable, though to whom one can't be quite sure, but give it a year or three or four and it will have acquired an appearance of obsolescence. As for the dwellings, the interiors, the workmanship, the fittings may well all be superior; there's no reason to suggest otherwise. But this is not the point.
The development has a certain industrial attractiveness. In a different context it might bring forth the plaudits of a local RIBA** equivalent (well, I say might), for example the context of whole new builds on land previously razed by nuclear or even conventional-warhead attack. No, architecturally, it has a utilitarian beauty, if that's not a contradiction, which it is. But the pursuit of the Blockist new architecture is changing not just the style of the housing stock in Alcúdia (and elsewhere), it is also altering the landscape, taking away that heritage of style and of colour. It is also, via its soullessness, eating away at a social and physical soul that had previously found building expression in the richness of shades of earth, sea, sun and beach. In the further pursuit of a perceived elevation of quality, it is symptomatic of the tourism conundrum - the move away, so we are told, from sea and beach to an abstract and still undefined "newness" of tourism. Architectural allegory.
Stark and lacking sympathy with the natural environment from which came a more traditional architecture and tourism, Blockism is the housing motif for the new age. But as with tourism, there is more than just a slight sense that architecture has lost its way and is striving for form from the seemingly formless, as with whatever the "new" tourism is supposed to be. Lost its way, and lost in AutoCAD and Photoshop.
** RIBA - Royal Institute of British Architects.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Toy Story - The Can Ramis Building
There was I suggesting yesterday that Miquel Ferrer's period as Alcúdia mayor has been relatively successful, and forgetting of course the slight blip of the fiasco that was/is the Can Ramis re-development in the old town.
This involved the demolition of the old Ramis houses by the car parking and the creation of something new. It has been a farcically tortuous process. Firstly, the budget was too low, most of this going - in advance - to the building firm which then went bust, the money itself being eaten up, not by the new construction, but by the new plaza by the market. Secondly, there was the collapse of part of the building last March, there having been a hiatus to allow further funding to be put in place. Thirdly, there is what we now have. Not quite finished but close to being so. A piece of Legoland in Alcúdia. The new Can Ramis looks as though one is invited to take it apart and re-do it in a different shape, just like Lego. What do you get if you take some large blocks of wood, attach a load of glass and put it all inside a great slab of concrete in one soulless oblong? The Lego Can Ramis. Maybe Lego is an official sponsor, and the town hall will sell naming rights. They should do in order to re-coup the budget overspend. It's not as if it's going to do all that it was intended to. Buses were meant to use it as a station. There was a change of idea, so I am told. Shame, the buses might have managed to knock it down.
No doubt some sap will come along at the official opening, whenever that is, and announce that it is "emblematic" or some such rot. Emblematic yes. Of a Danish toy company. It may well be that it falls to the new mayor to make an announcement. Another Miquel, always a Miquel. Once one Miquel, Ferrer, finally divests himself of the mayoral gown and slides his feet full-time under the tourism ministry desk, another is likely to be mayor: Miquel Llompart.
What will be going into the Lego Can Ramis will be the tourist office, a bus waiting-room and a café; this much we know. Getting on for one-and-half-million euros (the later budget, that is) to house something that already has a house, something that is useful but did not require such a lavish spend and something that is utterly unnecessary. Perhaps there will be more. Something a bit more emblematic. We will have to wait and see. Admittedly, though, the tourist office will be better sited in the new building, but it didn't need the expense that it has involved.
But more than anything, there is the architectural barrenness and pointlessness of the new building. Situated just outside the walls, it was not covered by the heritage law that protects Alcúdia. They could, therefore, do what they like, and so they have, thanks to Lego. There is not one iota of context to the building, a functional-only rectangular series of blockheaded building-blocks of an edifice with more than a hint of British 1960s town-centre architectural vandalism; all that's missing is the graffiti. Give them time.
Perhaps Ferrer has timed his run perfectly. He won't have to be the one pretending that this is any good when it comes to the opening ceremony. Unless they drag out the tourism minister.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Inspiral Carpets with Mark E. Smith, "I Want You", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPTpBoYVD8Q.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Am I Ever Gonna See My Wedding Day?
BEING SPANISH - PART THREE
Take a look along a street or at a row of houses or other buildings, and one - it might be hoped - would gain an appreciation as to one's location, albeit a very general location. It might be a good idea for some form of general knowledge quiz. Show the contestants photos of representative streets, and get them to name the country or the area. I wonder how many might get Spanish if they were to be shown some of the streets or buildings around here.
When the tourist is first deposited in one of the tourism centres, let's take The Mile as an example, what does he or she see? That expectation that some may have had of being Spanish would soon dissipate. What being Spanish is there? Only the Spanish word - nada - nothing. Tourism centres are built with one thing in mind and that's the first word of this sentence - tourism - and these centres tend to a conformity of the non-descript. They are, in some respects, comforting, as in their architectural barrenness they aspire to nothing more than a neutrality; the tourist feels no sense of dislocation by being jettisoned into a habitat of non-architecture. They are mass architecture for a mass tourism. Yet some centres could even be described as anti-architecture; they have elevated the art of a miserabilist prefabrication, combined with naked and unsympathetic commerce, into a state of anti-being Spanish which means that verification as to location can only be made through the consultation of a map or the airline ticket that confirms that one is indeed no longer in one's country of origin. Such anti-architecture exists all around, and it is not unique to one resort: Can Picafort has it in abundance; Playa de Muro boasts its hideous strip from the municipal office to the Banca March roundabout: the stretch going into the port of Alcúdia is also unit-upon-unit of unintelligent design as is that part of the frontline of Puerto Pollensa from the nautical club to Sail & Surf. Nowhere is immune to the appetite of anti-architecture.
But in truth, what does one really expect? These tourism centres are, for the most part, creations with only one thing in mind, and they are manifestations of a modernity that went largely unplanned. Moreover, these are not historic or heritage centres where conformity to a style is the first item on the planning application. Consequently, the tourism centre's sense of "being Spanish" can be said to be indeed Spanish because of its essentially ad-hoc nature. It may not be what some vague romantic image, conjured up in the mind of the tourist, may have anticipated, but it is a form of being Spanish nevertheless, albeit an equivocal one.
One looks, however, to the old towns and to the port areas for hints of something more exact. Yet what does one find? It is all too easy to overlook the fact that both the ports and both the old towns of Alcúdia and Pollensa are places not just of tourism but also of residence and business. This trinity of needs has not been well reconciled, and nowhere is evidence of this more startling than in Puerto Pollensa. There is a curious tag that gets attached to Puerto Pollensa which is that it is unspoilt or relatively unspoilt. There is no such thing as unspoilt unless there is no habitation; there is only degree of having been spoiled. But the unspoilt tag is perhaps illuminating; it is being Spanish euphemism. And so one casts one eye around Puerto Pollensa and what is revealed is a largely arbitrary set of apartments with no commonality, among which is the chic white and grey blandness of Taylor Woodrow's construction on the former Garbi hole. Where is this "being Spanish"? There is elegance, for sure; the marina has it, but not as much as Alcúdia's does. But neither marina can be defined as Spanish. If elegance is a facet of being Spanish, ironically the Taylor Woodrow building is arguably, despite its having been built without any sense of context, one of the few in Puerto Pollensa that can be said to possess it. The quaintness of old hotels in the centre of the port, unlike Alcúdia in this respect, smacks of a past, but it does not suggest Spanish as such. It is only when one gets to the square that one feels the stirrings of this vague concept, and it is the church that does it. Squares, in themselves, are not redolent of a uniquely Spanish style. Nor are churches especially, but the imposing style of Catholic churches and their positions in the centres of urban areas are a move in that direction. Puerto Pollensa does this much better than Puerto Alcúdia where there is no square and a church that one could be forgiven for ignoring. I used to. Indeed when I was first there and was told that such and such was near to the church, my reaction was what church. It was only when one day in its vicinity I heard the bells that I realised that the building which could pass for a community hall in a British council estate was indeed a church.
Amongst the non- and anti-architecture, it is the grand statements of religion that cause one to pause and recognise a being Spanish. Of course, such churches exist elsewhere in the Mediterranean as do the narrow streets of tightly built townhouses with shuttered windows, but it is they, and they alone, which impress with their strength and scale and argue the case for a being Spanish. And Pollensa old town does this with brilliance. The connections between the churches, along those narrow streets and from one square to another transport one into a clearly different place. In an architectural antiquity fashion, nowhere tries being Spanish better than Pollensa.
GETTING MARRIED IN THE MORNING
And talking of churches ... . This past weekend has seen the fifteenth annual wedding fair in Palma. Here is a strange old thing, not weddings, but the degree of interest there is in having a wedding in Mallorca; it is one of the things I get asked about from time to time, i.e. in terms of those from the UK who wish to have their wedding here. And the problem is, I don't really have a clue. I thought that one had to be a resident to have a church wedding, and this may be the case, but there is a whole industry here that arranges weddings in whatever setting. Also, there are restaurants that promote themselves as wedding breakfast locations, the splendid Jardin in Puerto Alcúdia for example. The "boda" is a massive deal here, as it is anywhere.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Bill Withers (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x28wpt_bill-withers-lovely-day-live_music). Today's title - a line from a cheesy but still great song. Who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Take a look along a street or at a row of houses or other buildings, and one - it might be hoped - would gain an appreciation as to one's location, albeit a very general location. It might be a good idea for some form of general knowledge quiz. Show the contestants photos of representative streets, and get them to name the country or the area. I wonder how many might get Spanish if they were to be shown some of the streets or buildings around here.
When the tourist is first deposited in one of the tourism centres, let's take The Mile as an example, what does he or she see? That expectation that some may have had of being Spanish would soon dissipate. What being Spanish is there? Only the Spanish word - nada - nothing. Tourism centres are built with one thing in mind and that's the first word of this sentence - tourism - and these centres tend to a conformity of the non-descript. They are, in some respects, comforting, as in their architectural barrenness they aspire to nothing more than a neutrality; the tourist feels no sense of dislocation by being jettisoned into a habitat of non-architecture. They are mass architecture for a mass tourism. Yet some centres could even be described as anti-architecture; they have elevated the art of a miserabilist prefabrication, combined with naked and unsympathetic commerce, into a state of anti-being Spanish which means that verification as to location can only be made through the consultation of a map or the airline ticket that confirms that one is indeed no longer in one's country of origin. Such anti-architecture exists all around, and it is not unique to one resort: Can Picafort has it in abundance; Playa de Muro boasts its hideous strip from the municipal office to the Banca March roundabout: the stretch going into the port of Alcúdia is also unit-upon-unit of unintelligent design as is that part of the frontline of Puerto Pollensa from the nautical club to Sail & Surf. Nowhere is immune to the appetite of anti-architecture.
But in truth, what does one really expect? These tourism centres are, for the most part, creations with only one thing in mind, and they are manifestations of a modernity that went largely unplanned. Moreover, these are not historic or heritage centres where conformity to a style is the first item on the planning application. Consequently, the tourism centre's sense of "being Spanish" can be said to be indeed Spanish because of its essentially ad-hoc nature. It may not be what some vague romantic image, conjured up in the mind of the tourist, may have anticipated, but it is a form of being Spanish nevertheless, albeit an equivocal one.
One looks, however, to the old towns and to the port areas for hints of something more exact. Yet what does one find? It is all too easy to overlook the fact that both the ports and both the old towns of Alcúdia and Pollensa are places not just of tourism but also of residence and business. This trinity of needs has not been well reconciled, and nowhere is evidence of this more startling than in Puerto Pollensa. There is a curious tag that gets attached to Puerto Pollensa which is that it is unspoilt or relatively unspoilt. There is no such thing as unspoilt unless there is no habitation; there is only degree of having been spoiled. But the unspoilt tag is perhaps illuminating; it is being Spanish euphemism. And so one casts one eye around Puerto Pollensa and what is revealed is a largely arbitrary set of apartments with no commonality, among which is the chic white and grey blandness of Taylor Woodrow's construction on the former Garbi hole. Where is this "being Spanish"? There is elegance, for sure; the marina has it, but not as much as Alcúdia's does. But neither marina can be defined as Spanish. If elegance is a facet of being Spanish, ironically the Taylor Woodrow building is arguably, despite its having been built without any sense of context, one of the few in Puerto Pollensa that can be said to possess it. The quaintness of old hotels in the centre of the port, unlike Alcúdia in this respect, smacks of a past, but it does not suggest Spanish as such. It is only when one gets to the square that one feels the stirrings of this vague concept, and it is the church that does it. Squares, in themselves, are not redolent of a uniquely Spanish style. Nor are churches especially, but the imposing style of Catholic churches and their positions in the centres of urban areas are a move in that direction. Puerto Pollensa does this much better than Puerto Alcúdia where there is no square and a church that one could be forgiven for ignoring. I used to. Indeed when I was first there and was told that such and such was near to the church, my reaction was what church. It was only when one day in its vicinity I heard the bells that I realised that the building which could pass for a community hall in a British council estate was indeed a church.
Amongst the non- and anti-architecture, it is the grand statements of religion that cause one to pause and recognise a being Spanish. Of course, such churches exist elsewhere in the Mediterranean as do the narrow streets of tightly built townhouses with shuttered windows, but it is they, and they alone, which impress with their strength and scale and argue the case for a being Spanish. And Pollensa old town does this with brilliance. The connections between the churches, along those narrow streets and from one square to another transport one into a clearly different place. In an architectural antiquity fashion, nowhere tries being Spanish better than Pollensa.
GETTING MARRIED IN THE MORNING
And talking of churches ... . This past weekend has seen the fifteenth annual wedding fair in Palma. Here is a strange old thing, not weddings, but the degree of interest there is in having a wedding in Mallorca; it is one of the things I get asked about from time to time, i.e. in terms of those from the UK who wish to have their wedding here. And the problem is, I don't really have a clue. I thought that one had to be a resident to have a church wedding, and this may be the case, but there is a whole industry here that arranges weddings in whatever setting. Also, there are restaurants that promote themselves as wedding breakfast locations, the splendid Jardin in Puerto Alcúdia for example. The "boda" is a massive deal here, as it is anywhere.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Bill Withers (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x28wpt_bill-withers-lovely-day-live_music). Today's title - a line from a cheesy but still great song. Who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Shape Of Things
The towns of Alcúdia and Pollensa are two of Mallorca's most extraordinary bequeathals. Their histories are a conjoint immensity of pre-Christendom, occupation, imported cultures, war, religion and architecture. These are the histories that reside within the city walls and in the ruins of Pollentia in Alcúdia and about the Plaça Major, up the Calvari steps and to the Roman bridge of Pollensa. Here is the architectural heritage of an old Mallorca. And then there is the rest.
Drive along the road from the motorway and glance to your left as you pass Pollensa, and you might well be inclined to just carry on. The impression is, if not of brutalism, then of a modernist fudge of non-description. Locally, one refers to the "pueblos" (small towns). Yet in reality Alcúdia and Pollensa are old and new towns, the latter nailed on as minor urban sprawls of unintelligent design. The idea that a sympathetic contemporary architecture might have mimicked the town-house style of the hearts of the towns was lost in planning offices stripped of foresight and amenable to a developer's lack of heart. The old centre of Alcúdia is protected by law as a heritage site; the surrounds were and are unprotected against an architectural dog's breakfast. Even something as "cultural" as Alcúdia's Auditorium looks like it has been transported, brick by glass facia, from a Robbins university campus lecture theatre in England; new, in the sense that the sixties might be defined as new, and utilitarian in both design and its lack of sympathy. It is not just Alcúdia and Pollensa. Sa Pobla, Santa Margalida, Muro all suffer in varying degrees; Muro's outer reaches, for example, could best be described as dreary, though some might spin this as light-industry chic. I'm not sure how one would describe them at worst.
There is not the same competition between the new and the old in the two towns' resorts, but it hasn't prevented them from being hotch-potched according to the latest whim, mainly of apartment block construction. Glass, less glass; white, less white; colour, less colour; however it is decreed by current trend, the effect is uniform in its very lack of uniformity - an absence of an overarching sense of purpose in terms of there being some symmetry to the towns' appearances. The ports of Alcúdia and Pollensa are the victims perhaps of their success and of their continuity. By contrast, Can Picafort, largely built from scratch over the past five decades, has a certain consistency and regulation, certainly in the residential areas of Son Bauló and the Avenida Santa Eulalia. In Son Bauló, there has been some success in marrying tourist and residential real estate with a degree of harmony; in the avenida, the two Viva complexes add grace to rather than detract from a wide-streeted elegance. Can Pic is a kind of Mallorcan Singapore: out with the old, in with the new, and applied with a degree of autocracy.
The ever-onward development of the ports, demonstrated by the various apartment sites in a state of permanent non-completion that may yet see them completed, has made the ports Lego architectural irregularity. One shape here, one shape there. It is only the old towns, the real old towns, that have the satisfaction of order.
And, in the case of Alcúdia, there is another shape that looms - that of the train. Where will it go? Will it go? The other evening, there was a meeting of local people to discuss the proposals for the siting of the line and the terminal. The advantages of the train coming to Alcúdia should be obvious, but there are those who are opposed to it, wherever it might end up. And then there are those opposed to specific sitings. You can, for example, see a "no-to-the-train" sign along the road from the roundabout as you enter Alcúdia going towards the roundabout for Puerto Pollensa. Anywhere but in the backyard of my finca, or right through my finca. Despite the sense of a terminal somewhere close to the centre of population, i.e. towards the back of the lovely auditorium, there is a lack of sense in respect of the changes to the landscape across the finca areas and their expropriation, to say nothing of the links to the proposed tram routes. Francesc Antich wanted an age of the train. It could be he will get an age. An age of debate with potentially no end.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Martika, "Toy Soldiers" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpJy46o_7b0). Today's title - '60s greats.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Drive along the road from the motorway and glance to your left as you pass Pollensa, and you might well be inclined to just carry on. The impression is, if not of brutalism, then of a modernist fudge of non-description. Locally, one refers to the "pueblos" (small towns). Yet in reality Alcúdia and Pollensa are old and new towns, the latter nailed on as minor urban sprawls of unintelligent design. The idea that a sympathetic contemporary architecture might have mimicked the town-house style of the hearts of the towns was lost in planning offices stripped of foresight and amenable to a developer's lack of heart. The old centre of Alcúdia is protected by law as a heritage site; the surrounds were and are unprotected against an architectural dog's breakfast. Even something as "cultural" as Alcúdia's Auditorium looks like it has been transported, brick by glass facia, from a Robbins university campus lecture theatre in England; new, in the sense that the sixties might be defined as new, and utilitarian in both design and its lack of sympathy. It is not just Alcúdia and Pollensa. Sa Pobla, Santa Margalida, Muro all suffer in varying degrees; Muro's outer reaches, for example, could best be described as dreary, though some might spin this as light-industry chic. I'm not sure how one would describe them at worst.
There is not the same competition between the new and the old in the two towns' resorts, but it hasn't prevented them from being hotch-potched according to the latest whim, mainly of apartment block construction. Glass, less glass; white, less white; colour, less colour; however it is decreed by current trend, the effect is uniform in its very lack of uniformity - an absence of an overarching sense of purpose in terms of there being some symmetry to the towns' appearances. The ports of Alcúdia and Pollensa are the victims perhaps of their success and of their continuity. By contrast, Can Picafort, largely built from scratch over the past five decades, has a certain consistency and regulation, certainly in the residential areas of Son Bauló and the Avenida Santa Eulalia. In Son Bauló, there has been some success in marrying tourist and residential real estate with a degree of harmony; in the avenida, the two Viva complexes add grace to rather than detract from a wide-streeted elegance. Can Pic is a kind of Mallorcan Singapore: out with the old, in with the new, and applied with a degree of autocracy.
The ever-onward development of the ports, demonstrated by the various apartment sites in a state of permanent non-completion that may yet see them completed, has made the ports Lego architectural irregularity. One shape here, one shape there. It is only the old towns, the real old towns, that have the satisfaction of order.
And, in the case of Alcúdia, there is another shape that looms - that of the train. Where will it go? Will it go? The other evening, there was a meeting of local people to discuss the proposals for the siting of the line and the terminal. The advantages of the train coming to Alcúdia should be obvious, but there are those who are opposed to it, wherever it might end up. And then there are those opposed to specific sitings. You can, for example, see a "no-to-the-train" sign along the road from the roundabout as you enter Alcúdia going towards the roundabout for Puerto Pollensa. Anywhere but in the backyard of my finca, or right through my finca. Despite the sense of a terminal somewhere close to the centre of population, i.e. towards the back of the lovely auditorium, there is a lack of sense in respect of the changes to the landscape across the finca areas and their expropriation, to say nothing of the links to the proposed tram routes. Francesc Antich wanted an age of the train. It could be he will get an age. An age of debate with potentially no end.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Martika, "Toy Soldiers" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpJy46o_7b0). Today's title - '60s greats.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
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?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Don’t Lead Me Halfway To Paradise
Yesterday’s headline title - “Rip it up and start again” - could equally apply today. Yet more on the regeneration of the coastal areas of Mallorca. The “Diario” reports on an architect’s proposal for the transformation of the frontline in Palmanova. The proposal envisages, among other things, the destruction of three hotels. The thinking behind it - to restore the paradise-like nature of the beach, sea and the mountains beyond; a paradise state that existed before the mass construction of thirty and forty years ago.
This is fantasy land, or is it? That there was unchecked development in the formative years of mass Mallorcan tourism is undeniable; that the coastlines were subject to the erection of blots on the landscape is also undeniable; that there is a move to righting these wrongs is also undeniable. But what of the practicalities?
Architects, once emboldened, could doubtless turn their eyes to other parts of the coastline - Alcúdia, for instance. Let us just presume that some bright architect has a vision for the reversion to a paradise state along the bay of Alcúdia. That vision includes the destruction of hotels. In Alcúdia alone, setting Playa de Muro to one side for the moment, there are four hotels or complexes that might be said to be threatened - Sunwing, Ciudad Blanca, Paraiso de Alcúdia, Condesa de la Bahía. All of these abut the beach; two others - Orquidea Playa and Eden Alcúdia - might be said to be “safe” as mainly only their gardens edge towards the sand.
Let us presume that these hotels were condemned. At a stroke some 12% of Alcúdia’s capacity would be destroyed; three out of these four account for getting on for 3000 places. Let us now also presume the same or another architect had a similar vision for Playa de Muro. Half the hotels would be wiped out. This would be economic insanity.
It won’t happen. The cost of expropriation would be prohibitive; the cost in overall economic terms incalculable; the cost in lost goodwill among hoteliers, tour operators and tourists irredeemable. Forget it.
QUIZ
Yesterday - Yes indeedy, Orange Juice (Edwyn Collins). Today’s title? Different singers to choose from.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
This is fantasy land, or is it? That there was unchecked development in the formative years of mass Mallorcan tourism is undeniable; that the coastlines were subject to the erection of blots on the landscape is also undeniable; that there is a move to righting these wrongs is also undeniable. But what of the practicalities?
Architects, once emboldened, could doubtless turn their eyes to other parts of the coastline - Alcúdia, for instance. Let us just presume that some bright architect has a vision for the reversion to a paradise state along the bay of Alcúdia. That vision includes the destruction of hotels. In Alcúdia alone, setting Playa de Muro to one side for the moment, there are four hotels or complexes that might be said to be threatened - Sunwing, Ciudad Blanca, Paraiso de Alcúdia, Condesa de la Bahía. All of these abut the beach; two others - Orquidea Playa and Eden Alcúdia - might be said to be “safe” as mainly only their gardens edge towards the sand.
Let us presume that these hotels were condemned. At a stroke some 12% of Alcúdia’s capacity would be destroyed; three out of these four account for getting on for 3000 places. Let us now also presume the same or another architect had a similar vision for Playa de Muro. Half the hotels would be wiped out. This would be economic insanity.
It won’t happen. The cost of expropriation would be prohibitive; the cost in overall economic terms incalculable; the cost in lost goodwill among hoteliers, tour operators and tourists irredeemable. Forget it.
QUIZ
Yesterday - Yes indeedy, Orange Juice (Edwyn Collins). Today’s title? Different singers to choose from.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, October 27, 2007
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.)
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.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
