Customising Character: Architectural Harmony

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.

MALLORCA TODAY - Playa de Muro urbanisations taken over

Playa de Muro is made up of urbanisations that were developed privately and which have remained under the management of developers ever since. Procedures have now been set out so that these urbanisations will formally transfer to Muro town hall.

Streets Of Your Town

Neighbourhoods. In the ‘hood. Some of us live in neighbourhoods, uncharmingly known as urbanisations. My own was started by the people who built the Esperanza hotel in Playa de Muro. I was on the upper terrace of one house in my neighbourhood earlier today. In all directions there were villas and chalets, each with a story, some of them not repeatable. Germans, French, Mallorcan, Spanish, British, a small enclave of part European Union, even though most keep themselves to themselves. Like anywhere.

Some live in neighbourhoods where the neighbours do not just keep to themselves and kick up a fuss about poor service from the local town hall. In the villa-graced residential area of Gotmar in Puerto Pollensa, with a similar demographic to my own, but bigger and partly built into a hillside, the neighbourhood group has taken cash-strapped Pollensa town hall to task over deficiencies such as collapsed pavements, lack of lighting and flooding when it rains heavily. And it looks as though they might be getting somewhere, which all goes to show what some co-operation and determined action can achieve.

Then there are some who live in ‘hoods that are far more in keeping with the gangsta implication of the ‘hood term. Take Son Banya in Palma, not much more than a shanty town, and the scene of a heavy police presence each weekend for the past three weeks. Drugs. Road blocks, tear-gas and Molotov cocktails, hardly the normal stuff of Mallorcan life, and a world away from my neighbourhood. The determined action there is now to try and secure a truce.

I first came to Mallorca in 1969. From the balcony of our hotel, I could see what was a shanty town, a small one, just a few ramshackle lean-tos or corrugated-roofed huts. These “dwellings” backed onto the neighbouring hotel. And now the shanties still exist with all the added problems handed down over a generation and a half.

Mallorca – one place, different worlds. Like anywhere. From the Mercedes and Audis of Playa de Muro and Gotmar to the burnt-out shell of an old Escort somewhere in Palma.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Bing Crosby. Today’s title – probably a few that might apply, but this is the title of a song by a great Australian group, which seems appropriate given the neighbours bit.

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