La Grande Motte Revisited

I first saw La Grande Motte in the summer of 1978, more than a decade before I would graduate from architecture school. Back then, the town left an impression on me for its large pyramid-shaped concrete buildings, and for the fact that the beaches had scores of young women who went topless; a bit of an eye-opener for a 14 year-old male just landed from North America. 

In retrospect, I must have been very distracted by the peaches on the beaches, because more recently, upon revisiting La Grande Motte (this time accompanied by a female architect-friend), the place looked completely different to me, even though, at its core, it has changed little during that period. Clearly, what seduced me this time around was the architecture.

I mean, here we have an example of a late 20th-century new town with public spaces that are civic, dignified and human life-affirming and whose buildings are designed to contribute to an overall harmony; to something greater than the mere sum of the parts. La Grande Motte is living proof that it is possible to design a humanly-scaled, walkable, cyclable, and architecturally sophisticated new town without resorting to, say, the pre-industrial nostalgia of so-called New Urbanism. (Perhaps I'm being nostalgic too, but at least it's nostalgia for a period I have lived through.)

A small civic square on one side...

...on the other side, a courtyard garden

Architect Jean Balladur master-planned La Grande Motte in the mid-1960s as a place where the Northern European middle-class, which at that time was beginning to frequent Spanish destinations like Torremolinos or Benidorm en masse, could vacation closer to home, and in an architecturally more sophisticated setting. Emphasis was clearly placed on creating an overall sense of harmony akin to that of traditional vernacular architecture, but with modern materials and expression. 

La Grande Motte does not banish commerce, signage, sun shades, or Hello Kitty beach towels hung to dry over a balcony handrail. This is no Communist vacation camp. Rather, these kinds of elements of "individuality" are subtly veiled behind differently patterned perforated concrete screen-façades, which vary playfully but also consistently from building to building. 

Ah, yes, that age-old conundrum of finding a balance between overall urban identity and individual architectural identity. Interestingly, no building is privileged over any other at La Grande Motte. There are no singular "landmark" buildings by famous architects whose task is to somehow compensate for a sea of surrounding mediocrity. A similar lack of hierarchy occurs in the urban plan: No rows of sea-fronting buildings blocking second-rate buildings in-behind. 

Since 2010, La Grande Motte has been officially recognized as French 20th-century patrimôine. But it deserves to be celebrated outside of France too, because I doubt many other examples of new-town urbanism from the last half-century are this successful still to this day.

Strange Bedfellows

Left: Construction of Instant City, Ibiza, in 1971 (photo www.domusweb.it)
Right: Hotel Algarrobico, Carboneras, Almería, 2010.

The image at left shows the construction of the "Instant City" during the congress of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) of 1971, which was held at the Hotels Cartago and Galeón in Ibiza (visible in the background). The Instant City is currently the subject of a celebratory exhibition at the Macba (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art) titled "La utopía es posible."

The image at right shows the infamous Hotel Algarrobico, construction of which began in the early 2000s within the boundary of the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Nature Park--a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 1997. Although it has repeatedly been ordered to be demolished by the courts, this never completed behemoth is still standing to date. As part of a 2007 Greenpeace "action" to raise awareness, the words "hotel ilegal" were painted in large four story high letters on its sea-facing elevation. 

The two hotels in these images, whose architecture is not entirely dissimilar, are separated by a distance of only four hundred kilometers and a timespan of only a few decades, yet one is celebrated as the site of an optimistic event that marked a milestone in the cultural modernization of Spain, while another has become the very symbol of political corruption and reckless development in this country. Utopia and dystopia: strange bedfellows indeed.

Visitant / Local II

"The beach is the only space of enjoyment that humans have found in nature." - Henri Lefebvre

W: what is it good for?

A building has been going up--or did it come from outer space?--on Barcelona's Sant Sebastià Beach that is popularly refered to as "Hotel Vela" (sail hotel), but whose commercial name is actually Hotel W Barcelona. That's right: W, as in Dubya. Just what has ex-president George Bush II got to do with this hotel? Probably nothing, since he's in the oil-and-war business. But it seem ironic that the name of this hotel would inadvertently honor the most despised US president ever: this building is turning out to be the most despised new construction in Barcelona since work began several centuries ago on the Citadel.

And just as the atrocities committed by Bush junior and his band of inept cronies prompted all sorts of protest, resistance and terrorism movements throughout the world, this building has similarly given rise to an anti-hotel neighborhood group that organizes events such as this one

as well as a Facebook group called GAHV: Grup Anti Hotel Vela Barceloneta (Anti Hotel Vela Barceloneta Group) with over 500 members.

The reason the building is despised is obvious enough: it is a huge, pretentious, malproportioned and unsightly behemoth that casts a shadow on Barcelona's most frequented and beloved public space: the beach. It is situated only meters from the coastline, which together with its unprecedented height means it can be seen from just about anywhere in the metropolitan area. In short: it is a big fat pig of a building whose curving profile resembles a beer belly more than it does a sail. Oh, did I mention that the building is plain ugly?

What everyone is perplexed about is this: why was there no public consultation process or environmental assessment before permission was granted for this project, and why was it exempted from Spanish coastal setback laws?

There is little that can be done at this point about Hotel W, save throw a bomb at it. Let it serve instead, for the many architecture students that visit Barcelona, as a perfect example of how definitely NOT to situate, proportion, or design a building--just as Dubya's presidency serves as an example of how NOT to run a nation. As with any done deal, one has no choice but to make the best of it.