Tenerife: Calatrava's Seaside Icon in the Canaries

After walking through Haarlem and Hoofddorp in The Netherlands looking for a trio of Santiago Calatrava bridges which never materialized, we were eager to see one of Calatrava's most inspiring works - the Tenerife Concert Hall, located a bit off the beaten part in the Canary Islands.  The Canary Islands are Spanish territory which sits just off the coast of Morocco, and are a seaside resort known to Europeans, but largely unknown to Americans.  We were not in the resort part of the Canaries, but instead sought out Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital, which is a seaside town with a rich religious heritage.  Near the seaside of Tenerife sits a beautiful circular park, with a cross-bearing tower in the center and silent, proud Guardian statues all around.


The town circle, silent guardians, and religious imagery overall give the impression of a town with deep reverence for its past, and an unmistakable pride it its religious and military heritage.  Along the walk by the sea are a jumbled mix of sites and buildings, from a working port, to government buildings, to old forts and archeological sites in various stages of disrepair.  The town itself lacks the beauty of most of the cities of Spain, but conveys a fierce pride in its unique place in history.

 

Overall, Santa Cruz de Tenerife is a simple town of offices and shops.  Along the seaside of the town however, amidst graffiti, government buildings, a working port, and old forts, stands one of Calatrava's finest works - the extraordinary Tenerife Concert Hall.  The work is beautiful, striking, and imposing.

Several aspects of the structure stand out.  It is largely monochromatic, with a base consisting of glistening white tile, and  a spire draped over the base made of simple beige concrete.  The base resembles the prow of a ship, and seems to cut through the grey slate which surrounds it like a ship through deep grey waters.

Up close, the concert hall carries its own surprises.  While the ship-white base seems like a solid structure from a distance, up close it is fashioned of broken white tile, a theme which recurs often in Calatrava's work, and one clearly borrowed from Barcelona turn of the century architect and designer Antoni Gaudi.

The spire draped on top of the structure is a Calatrava signature, first tried here and then brought to full fruition in his masterwork City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain, a work of extraordinary scale that we look forward to seeing in a couple of days.

From different angles, the spire brings different feelings.  From some directions, it brings a sense of wonder, as it rests improbably on a single point on the concert hall below.  From other angles, it feels like the head of a cobra, poised to dance, recoil and strike.  At other angles, it seems as if a great shark is swimming behind the Concert Hall.  The effect is playful and eye catching.

The structure is very distinctive, stark and austere, and invites reflection and meditation.

It offers a good example of monochromatic design, which achieves a stark effect, beautiful and imposing but rather austere.

In both it's seaside setting and in its curving structure, it pulls out memories of the Sydney Opera House, and just as the Opera House does, it invites us to think of sails filling with seaside wind.

As we walk around the concert hall, we talk a lot about Gehry's description of the CONTEXT of an iconic work, how the setting and area around, above, and underneath a structure create a feeling as important to the success of the work as the work itself.  As we walk towards Calatrava's Concert Hall along the water from the North, there is no epic vista of the Concert Hall framed by trees or parkland.  There is no gradual approach, leading to wonder and surprise.  Instead, the Northern approach is mostly filled with the detritus of a port, and with a half finished excavation site of a ruin of some sort.  The Concert Hall itself is surrounded not by the lush landscaping of a seaside island, but by cold concrete.

In this aspect, the Concert Hall from the North feels very different from the Sydney Opera House, where the proximity to the Circular Quay, with it's ferries coming and going, creates a FEELING OF BUSTLE AND LIFE BROUGHT ABOUT BY NATURAL DAILY ACTIVITIES.

The southern approach is much better, featuring a nicely contrasting old seaside fort, some benches where lovers sat holding hands and some trellises and arbors which perhaps outside of Fall are covered with vines and plants.  Wild cats and fishermen roam the sea wall across from the Concert Hall to the south, and there were whimsical touches, like spray painted likenesses of singers from Elvis Presley to BB King on the rocks below the seawall by the water.

From one side - the South - a glorious plaza, INCORPORATION WITH HISTORY AND NATURE, and A GOOD BIT OF WHIMSY.   But from the North, the context here feels incomplete.   Or perhaps a missed opportunity.  Let's hope it's the former.

What does this mean for our design?  It really brings home to the two of us the importance of context.  When a beautiful, potentially iconic, work is surrounded by inadequate context, or context which magnifies the coldness of a work, the work suffers.

So when we choose a site, we need to clearly understand all the possibilities provided by its context - and all the limitations that a site offers as well.  These have the potential to take what could be breathtaking and make it only intriguing.

On the Southern side, the site is glorious.  Calatrava has PLAYED WITH THE SETTING, including the fishing piers and old forts left over from another time, and supplementing them with arbors, trellises, and plantings, creating a very pleasing approach from the South which is ATTUNED WITH NATURE, and a plaza which invites pause and reflection.

 

A nice combination of the unlikely, the reflective, and the iconic.

 

- Tod and Rachel

Tenerife Concert Hall with Waves from Tod Loofbourrow on Vimeo.