Submitted by Jonathan Budd
Rafael Moneo’s glass cubes in San Sebastian
Spain Architecture News - Mar 16, 2008 - 23:25 10682 views
there is a problem with the maincharacter of Kursaal’s twenty-meter glass facades. During the day, thetrough structure gives the appearance of rice paper window shades, oreven the sails on a Chinese junk. There is a certain matt, fineness ofcharacter about the excessive use of glass, in any case during the day.However, it is more convincing at night, when the hollow facadesradiate an inviting, yellowish light, which reveals the steel module of6 meters {=3 troughs} and the depth of the somewhat narrower facadecavity {2 meters}. The way the glass cube’s multipurpose activities arerevealed at night without the need of other signage than the size ofthe facades and the warm light, is an original and successful touch.When the activities cease around midnight and Kursaal extinguishes thelights, the tipping cubes again lie in somber darkness, like the stoneblocks that protect the coast by the river.
Few buildings illustrate thedevelopment of international architecture during the 1990`s in such athought-provoking way as the Kursaal culture center complex in theBasque town of San Sebastian. The architecture was determined by aclosed design competition in March 1990 with the Spanish architect,Rafael Moneo {b.1937} as the winner, and the scheme was completed inAugust 1999. In addition to spanning the period of the 1990`s, Kursaalalso represents the minimalistic excesses of the decade mixed with anunderstandable fear of being locked into a stereotyped form idiom.
www.rockwool.dk/sw57795.asp
Few buildings illustrate thedevelopment of international architecture during the 1990`s in such athought-provoking way as the Kursaal culture center complex in theBasque town of San Sebastian. The architecture was determined by aclosed design competition in March 1990 with the Spanish architect,Rafael Moneo {b.1937} as the winner, and the scheme was completed inAugust 1999. In addition to spanning the period of the 1990`s, Kursaalalso represents the minimalistic excesses of the decade mixed with anunderstandable fear of being locked into a stereotyped form idiom.
www.rockwool.dk/sw57795.asp