Emptying for living in the collage city: a design strategy of Sáenz de Oíza

Abstract

During the second half of the eighties, Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza faced two large-scale cultural projects simultaneously in Spain, which were built over/in a previous existing building: The Atlantic Center of Modern Art in Las Palmas (1985-89) and the Alhóndiga Cultural Center in Bilbao (1988-90). In both projects, the existing building was emptied -maintaining its façades recognizable- and a new structure was implemented with a different use from the original. The new intervention could both respect or adjust to the shape limits of the previous building and surpass them. As a theoretical framework of Sáenz de Oíza, Collin Rowe’s ideas from his book Collage City (1981 ed. Spanish) are identified in the way he defends this kind of urban bricolage through which the old elements are maintained -in opposition to the ideas of Modernism- and the new elements are assembled freely. From this point of view, the two study cases are analyzed -the final proposal for the Alhóndiga’s project and the building in Las Palmas- focusing on the façades as remains of the past and the void as a generator of the projects. Connections, parallels, and divergences of the design strategy used by Sáenz de Oíza in both cases are established, which is based on the collage and decontextualization defended by Rowe.