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Office of Architecture in Barcelona add a splash of colour to Benidorm seaside
Benidorm is perhaps the one Spanish town where the massive industry of leisure and tourism has turned into a paradigm, the promenade in Benidorm, a new transitional location between built city and the natural space of sea and beach, was officially opened in July 2009.
The promenade is not understood as a frontier but as an intermediary space rendering this transition permeable. It is structured as a place with a rich topography, as a dynamic space that accommodates the act of strolling and watching the sea, but also organised into different areas for relaxing in.
The promenade, understood as a place with a life of its own, is structured in different layers: a first structural layer creates the perimeter line in white concrete; another textured layer with paving in different colours and a last layer of street furniture and natural features like water and vegetation. All these contribute to a homogeneous location with its own personality; as well as being a predecessor to the new architecture of the 21st century by combining building technology and nature in a single whole.
The project subsumes three different essences within the organic forms of modernism: the forms of fractal geometry in nature; the latest building technologies; and avant-garde landscape design. The new promenade leaves nothing to chance but grows out of setting up a number of specific laws, a geometrical ground plan and modulation. A constructional logic is thus established, facilitating its modulation in sections. All the functional aspects are brought together: the promenade, rest and relaxation area, vantage point, transition to the beach, architectural barriers, direct access to parking, rainwater collectors, beach lighting, road communication, integration of street furniture, services infrastructure, and so on.
A new landside frontage is constructed, providing views of the sea and the beach from the upper level of the promenade, and a new borderline established, integrating the different circulations in its undulations and platforms, eliminating a barrier and constructing a place for people to be in.
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