Palacio De Deportes De Santander, Santander, Spain

All the elements of the Palacio de Deportes de Santander harmoniously complement each other, respecting the overall scale of the setting, uniting form and function into a dissoluble entity.

Interior of Palacio De Deportes De Santander

The process and the spaces resulting from the process are in organic dialogue along every scale present in the structure: from occupants’ clothes to single training rooms, the scale progresses to the large dimensions of the multifunctional hall, expressed on the exterior and the form and function of the building.

Interior of Palacio De Deportes De Santander

Palacio De Deportes De Santander at night

Palacio De Deportes De Santander, Santander, Spain
Archtiects: J. Franco Arquitectors
Client: Ayuntamieto de Santander

Erich Gutmorgeth’s speciality is difficult locations. The architect advises his client to find a site that nobody else wants to obtain, because these plots are mostly available at a low price. Then, the saved money is meant to improve the building A detached home near Innsbruck shows the result, which can be achieved with this strategy here, the view had to be shielded from the mundane, neighbouring structure in country house style Gutmorgeth therefore covered the house with a second skin of perpendicular slats, set apart from the facade at a small distance and creating an intermediate zone, which is used as a terrace. The terrace extends over two floors up to the roof, so that it is both protected from rain and appears particularly spacious. The external layer filters the view towards the outside: if the resident looks through the facade vertically, the surroundings become visible, but if he directs his gaze at a tangent across the slats, they close and block out the neighbouring area The second skin breaks up in some places and allows well-calculated views of the charming Tirolian hills in the distance.

The dialogue between building and landscape is the central theme of a villa in the south of Mallorca. Like a medieval castle it overlooks the spacious site with such a natural air as if it had always been there. Since Claudio Silvestrin, the architect had earth pigment from this area worked into the plaster, its mainly closed walls are in the same brownish colour as the dry earth of the surrounding environment. A dead-straight narrow path, which is paved with natural stone typical for the region, leads over a stretch of one hundred meters up the slightly rising site towards the building, where a vertical slit Just 83 centimetres wide dramatically cuts through the fa?ade and provides access to the interior. Via this loophole, the visitor enters a courtyard. Whereas as he approached, he was still wondering how many rooms might be included in the imposing villa, now it turns out that the largest part is occupied by a quadratic, external room, which is embodied in the building volume It measures 12 by 12 meters and is certainly not over furnished?only a bench, made of local stone, invites the guest to sit down. On one of the remaining facades of the villa there is a pool that is directly joined to the building and, as a horizontal element like the path, merges the villa with its surroundings.

Nearer the forms of rococo, the facade of the sanctuary of Loreto - made beginning in 1721 on a design by Christoph Dientzenhofer and completed by his son Kilian is especially wide and has austere architectural forms emphasized by the elegant colouring of the cornices, with subtly undulating movement only in the two higher side bodies and in the decorative bell tower.

The architectural face of the city and its region was in large measure a result of the work of a family of architects - the Dientzenhofers - whose creations are characterized by an insistent use of curving lines and complex plans composed of spatial cells derived from Guarini. Around 1700, they were responsible for the last great flowering of baroque ecclesiastical architecture.

Of particular importance were the churches of St Nicholas in the Little Quarter (Mala Strana) of Prague and St Margaret at Brevnov, near Prague, both works by Christoph Dientzenhofer. These two splendid churches present similar forms derived from the application of Borromini and Guarini principles, such as spatial juxtaposition and the large curved cornice on columns or pillars, also known as the `Dientzenhoferian motif’. The churches by Dientzenhofer are composed of oval cells that interpenetrate following lines of expansion or contraction - a system called spatial syncopation or syncopated interpenetration - combined with the Central European system of mural pillars, which expresses the aspiration for strong plastic and spatial integration, while the external walls are generally treated as neutral surfaces. The space is presented as an ‘open’ system to which it is possible to add cells at will, following the principle of ‘pulsating juxtapositions.

Designed and built for the eccentric William Beckford, Fonthill Abbey had an enormous cruciform plan with a panoramic gallery more than 100 metres long, some of it presented in the state of ruin, the rest put to domestic uses Wyatt created a visionary delirium that proved, however, to be structurally weak the giant 84 metre high tower ended up collapsing one night in 1825, destroying most of this romantic fantasy, leaving only the north wing.

Military constructions, most of all fortifications, presented one of the major expenses faced by a baroque state in Europe, and the military geography of modern Europe came into being in part because of the varying ability of states to pay their bills. The more or less constant pressure of warfare between the emerging powers of the young modern Europe induced many cities to pay for avant-garde fortifications. Excellence in planning such fortifications was originally an Italian monopoly, but it shifted northward in the wake of the conflicts.

In 1667 King Louis XIV of France began a series of aggressive campaigns against the Spanish Netherlands and the Rhineland, thus providing the opportunity to make an ambitious programme of fortifications along France’s northern and eastern borders. The pre-eminence of French military architecture results as much from the munificence of its sovereign as from the excellent qualities of its greatest military architect, Sebastien Leprestre de Vauban, who designed a series of revolutionary and ingenious fortifications, along with new cities, using ideas dictated by the pragmatic breaking of academic rules. He worked out an easy compromise between the 16th-century Italian obtuse- angle bastion and the 17th-century Dutch acute-angle bastion and reintroduced, in the Alps and the Pyrenees, the citadel, bastioned towers with blockhouses.

At the same time, the classical idea of beauty as harmony and balance was renounced by Edmund Burke in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), which laid the basis for an aesthetics of sentiment that distinguishes the beautiful from the sublime, the latter understood as the response to whatever is terrible and emotionally disturbing. This concept, together with that of the ‘picturesque’, drew attention to whatever was different, dangerous, surprising, even decadent; the ideal of symmetry was abandoned in favour of asymmetry and irregularity. Ruins became a popular subject because of the emotions they inspire.

In this context, the asymmetrical layout of Strawberry Hill set in motion the so-called castellated Gothic, in which the country house is turned into a medieval castle placed in the midst of nature, if possible atop a rocky crag. Thanks to its association with the picturesque and the sublime, this strongly visionary style soon reached great popularity.

During the years 1810-20 the eccentric Gothic reveries, having reached a kind of culmination in the romantic concept of Fonthill Abbey, gave way to the demand for the accurate imitation of medieval forms combined with a return to medieval craftsmanship. The Gothic revival thus left the sphere of the country house and took its place as a style in competition with neoclassicism, and since Gothic was considered a Christian style by definition, it immediately conquered the sphere of church building, attaching itself directly to the late Perpendicular Gothic, considered a completely autonomous and original English creation.

Modena has numerous claims to fame, not only is it the hometown of Ferrari (the Italians other great passion), it was also the hometown of the late and great world famous Italian tenor, Luciano Pavarotti and it’s also one of the Emilia-Romagna region’s great gastronomic cities, producer of the most beautiful vinegar in the world, balsamic among other things. If you are into your food Emilia-Romagna has to be the Italian region to visit. But what is the real Modena like? Having visited Bologna many years ago and been overcome by its beauty I’d always promised myself I’d get to Modena one day.

Other than the obvious things about Modena I knew very little about it so was looking forward immensely to finding out more about the cities Italian architecture. As soon as I arrived I headed for the main square, when ever you arrive in an Italian city for the first time the main Piazza is always a good starting point.

Piazza Grande is the main Piazza in Modena, and a very grand Italian Piazza it is too, being home to the beautiful cathedral. It has to be one of the most beautiful churches anywhere in and one of the most beautiful I’ve seen any where in the world. Building started on the cathedral in 1099. At the time Modena was without a bishop as the one chosen by the Pope was not approved by the locals, hence the citizens of Modena managed and paid for the cathedral to be completed, some achievement.

The beautiful white stones covering the outside of the cathedral were discovered, during renovation work to be Roman tombstones, this was a surprise to the restoration workers and historians who even found inscriptions on the stones. The doorways are adorned with life-like sculptures and these really set the cathedral apart from older cathedrals that generally have flatter one dimensional sculpture’s. The sculptures look magnificent in their white stone but they have a somewhat eerie appearance to them due to the use of lead as eyes, the black eyes staring down at you from the beautiful white figures is strange.

Standing proudly at either side of the main entrance to the cathedral are two magnificent Roman lions, the doorway to the Piazza Grande is also guarded by two magnificent lions, this time made from an Italian pink marble. I could spend hours inside cathedrals just looking at the reliefs and carvings, I always feel slightly disappointed when leaving a magnificent looking cathedral that isn’t regaled with historical reliefs that tell a story.

I certainly wasn’t disappointed in Modena. On one side of the church, beneath an arch linking it to a tower there are some wonderful carvings believed to be King Arthur and his knights as well as scenes from Aesop’s fables. My favourite of all was a calendar showing the months of the year complete with an agricultural task for the Italian farmers that would be carried out in the given month. This reminded me of a similar carving I saw at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice.

A later section was added to the cathedral in the 13-14th centuries, this was made out of a beautiful Italian pink marble and is of a more Gothic appearance than the earlier parts of the cathedral but it still links nicely with the older section, rather than looking like a bolt-on.

As with all Italian cities the main Piazza is the focal point of the city and Piazza Grande is no different. Up until 1931 the Piazza held the city market but this was moved to a purpose built covered site where it is still held today. Although not the site for the market any longer the Piazza is still very much the place to meet people, take a stroll or just sit and enjoy an espresso.

Modena’s buildings are a wonderful terra cotta colour, the sort of colour that lends itself wonderfully to Italian architecture, so warming and gentle on the eye. The good thing about Italy is that is still so in touch with its heritage, the citizens of Modena have to respect their heritage to the degree that the colour of all buildings must fall within local council guidelines to keep the aesthetics of the city.

Walking through the narrow atmospheric cobbled streets into the sleepy piazzas you can really get lost in the sense of Italian history that Modena exudes through its architecture. Modena has had an up and down history. Modena flourished under Roman rule but then went into steady decline as a power hub until the end of the 16th century when the ruling d’Este family made it their home. The family saw how Modena had fallen into declined and realised that it had potential and set about modernising the city to make it one of the Italian greats.

The d’Este family built their home, the Palazzo Ducale (not to be confused with the Venetian palace of the same name) on top of Modena’s existing castle. The spectacular Palazzo still stands today; still in all its original glory, the unfortunate thing is that it is now an impregnable Italian military academy with no access for to the public.

After a couple of days spent walking around the beautiful city of Modena sampling the wonderful architecture it dawned on me that I hadn’t even taken the time out to look deeper into Modena’s gastronomic heritage. Now that is something to look forward to.