During my time in Sevilla, it’s been difficult not to notice the city’s tallest building, Cajasol Tower. I remember seeing it for the first time. At midday, the colored frame appeared to be terracotta with teal blue windows, perfect color wheel opposites . It has a circular base and seemed like a modern reference to the Tower of Pisa. I remember being blown away. I found this building so intentional and stunningly beautiful, I couldn’t stop looking at it.
Loving the building as much as I do, imagine my surprise to hear my host mom say she absolutely hates it. But WHY? How could you hate a building, especially one that’s so cool and makes your city look great? I asked a Spanish friend the next week. Same thing. Complete hatred. Gut reactions brought me to question: do Sevillanos have an aversion to modernity or progress? I figured maybe they are obsessed with their past and uninterested in their future.
I started asking everyone. Up to this point in my semester, I haven't found one Sevillano who enjoys the tower. What I have found is that Sevillanos identify strongly with the cathedral. When they look at a painting or a movie, or as they drive into Sevilla, they see their home city upon view of the Giralda. To them, a modern glass and iron building doubling the Giralda’s size reshapes their city, possibly leading a future of buildings that hide the Giralda, or the true Sevilla.
Congratulations on the text. I found it very interesting.
ResponderEliminarI would just like to point something out: regardless of popular opinion, there is a current of intellectual debate in the city which, to a greater or lesser extent, has criticized the erection of the skyscraper for various reasons. First, the construction of a tower symbol of a bank at a time when the Spanish banking system has shipwrecked. Second, the lack of suitability of the place in which the building has been located, lacking any dialogue with its urban environment.Third, the banality of a project that has no defined function: What is this skyscraper? Another mall? A luxury hotel? An office building of which there is no real demand in society? Fourth, although this skyscraper is not an 'ugly building', I honestly think that it is not a particularly prominent example of architecture. Its author, the Argentine architect César Pelli, has works of higher quality, complexity and depth from a spatial and even aesthetic point of view. We could even question whether or not the growth model of the skyscraper is exhausted, and if it can contribute something to the urban needs of cities that have never felt the need to present 'phallic symbols' between their building sample.
Despite all the above, I am not especially against the tower. However, I think that this project has left too many aspects unresolved (or badly solved), so it has ended bordering on banality and that has condemned it to become the opposite of what a skyscraper should be: icon of what Seville does not want.
That, more than its aesthetic condition, explains the rejection of the population towards the tower of Cajasol.