AVA Architecture + Design Yearbook 2019

Page 162

UNIT 8

Benidorm, a question of belonging Armor Gutierrez Rivas, Rosa Rogina

Unit 8 perceives architecture as a social and political practice, and therefore promotes mobilisation of architectural thinking and making as a tool to engage with current matters of concern, both local and global. It explores how can architectural design process be expanded beyond its conventional role and be utilised as a tool for a wider social, economical and cultural change. The unit looks more closely into territories of spatial and/or social tension and attempts to unpack and address these complex contemporary conditions. By balancing in between identified real-world context and radical imagination, the students are encouraged to use the identified tension as a main driver for their design proposal. With a focus on Benidorm, Spain, this year we are investigating the inherent relationship in between housing crisis and mass tourism. By looking into the specific case of of Benidorm, the unit seeks for a new housing typology that bridges the gap in between the local and the holidaymaker. Benidorm, a city that was only a hundred years ago a fisherman’s village of 3000 people, is today better known as the Mediterranean New York with more skyscrapers per squared meters than any other city in Europe. The redevelopment of Benidorm was considered to be a successful urban scheme that due to its high density and all-inclusive offers affordable to everyone is able to accommodate over 12 million tourists every year.

BENIDORM, SPAIN

However, for the local people the proliferation of allinclusive mass tourism here has been the subject of much debate over the years. Today, the city sees little interaction between modern holidaymaking and local people or culture, with the architectural typology of allinclusive gated hotels and apartments foregrounding this social, spatial and economical division. While building on Ricardo Bofill’s The City in the Space utopian studies for an adaptable, multifunctional and flexible community, students in Unit 8 are asked to design flexible housing schemes that allow owners to adapt their houses to seasonal tourism and act as a shared platform facilitating a greater cross-cultural interaction when needed.

“British tourist moans her Benidorm holiday was ruined by ‘too many Spanish people’ Freda Jackson, 81, said she cried at the end of her two-week trip to the popular holiday destination through travel operator Thomas Cook in May this year” Mirror UK, 13 Aug 2018


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