The current dissertation investigates the first architectural works that arose on the Costa del Sol as a result of the shift towards international tourism that sprung in Spain in the 1950’s, and it analyses how its implementation would imply, during the second half of the twentieth century, the gradual emergence of new lifestyles and new urban developments that can presently be considered as contemporary.
The American agreement of 1953, despite its military origin, brought to Spain both monetary compensations and international relations developments that would allow the country to abandon autarchy and economic isolation and to initiate a standardization process with the western world that would carry unpredictable consequences. The Costa del Sol, thus, sprung up as a phenomenon of tourist exploitation of a territory consisting of nice landscape and good weather.
In the present research, further analysis has been undertaken on the tourist process and on its anthropological, social, cultural and economic derivations as a direct result of the interrelation between local and foreign populations in a destination where different modi vivendi interact. In this sense, Dali’s visit to Torremolinos in 1930 allowed to introduce in the current research certain concepts related to chance as an element that integrates unforeseeable mistakes, deformities or transformations.
These first architectures of flamboyant modern style were developed between 1959 and 1969, in a pre-existing virgin environment that stretched from the beach to the mountains. Those architectural designs provided density and singularity and encouraged an expression of multiplicity starting from their own models. This process favored an interactive phenomenon engaging the different solutions that were proposed.
As seen from the nation’s capital, this territory was recognized as a singular supra-regional space between Cabo de Gata and Punta de Tarifa. In such a territory, a series of small villages would be interconnected along the coastal line thanks to the 340 highway.
The first commercial architecture also emerged because of the connection that Málaga airport provided to international tourism. Thanks to this nexus, specific features belonging to the architectural culture of the time were exposed: modernity was used as an appeal, exotic buildings were mainly used to display signs of progress amidst an impoverished and rural periphery.
METHODOLOGY
A) Search for primary sources such as original documents related to the different selected projects, and interviews with several leading architects of the time.
B) Search, compilation and cataloging of the different Costa del Sol Urban Plans that were developed during the selected decade. Analysis of their proposals and consequences.
C) Study of several cases related to the two models of predominant architectural interventions in the selected period: hotels and apartment complexes.
D) Establishing a gradual approach by phases, working as “multiples” and allowing to set self-similitude links.
E) Analysis of the relation of these projects with their surrounding landscape, with the existing or non-existing city, and with the interior of the apartment cells.
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THIS DISSERTATION
The phenomenon that has been studied has allowed for yet another scale to be discerned, particularly attending to the emergence of a new urban entity. For this purpose, Frank Lloyd Wright’s theories about the city in the 1930’s, along with ReynerBanham’s revealing vision about LA and the beginning of the 1970’s, together with Rem Koolhaas’ approach about the generic city as an epitome of multiple choice, have all allowed to set the parameters that frame the study of the new urban entity of difficult interpretation that was created in the Costa del Sol in the 1960’s.
The current dissertation concludes about the role that these first tourist architectures had in the developing, unstoppable, and dynamic process that was initiated during the selected period of focus. This phenomenon has given rise to a suburban, centerless and a-hierarchical development where a myriad of relationships in continuous adaptation have emerged to define it as a new city.
In this process, these first architectures were originated as exotic objects given their defying modernity. This quality made those buildings into alluring elements that would invite tourist activity; they became ambassadors of new contemporary lifestyles, and it is because of this that a gradual crystallization of the urban entity was fostered within their immediate surroundings.
Their later evolution has derived into a progressive filling of blanks and voids. In an unplanned, unexpected and even hazardous manner, the first architectures that half-served tourist life, have eventually derived into a whole city that lacks hierarchies.
FINAL CONCLUSION
Architecture has grown more realistic than ever, becoming a tangible element in the city flow. The unstoppable process that was initiated in the Costa del Sol can only be understood from its architectures that accommodate moments and spaces. Signs, culture, lifestyles, trends, construction economy and contemporary life are intertwined within those spaces to steadily colonize this territory in an irreversible process similar to that of many other places in the planet. The unveiling of this process has constituted the main argument in the present doctoral dissertation.