Ingenuity versus Conservatism: Pioneering HighRise Housing in the Basque Province of Gipuzkoa (1958–73)

Abstract

From the enactment of Spain’s 1956 Land Law until the first oil crisis of 1973, during a building cycle that lasted nearly 15 years, the first residential tower blocks were built in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa, Spain, near the border with France. A study of 16 representative cases, most of them being groups of several towers, demonstrates that Basque architects showed no small ambition and inventiveness when facing the new challenge. Despite the uneven success of the relationship between these neighbourhoods and their urban environment, the architects of these towers were able to develop novel forms of internal organisation, catching up with their European colleagues. Various arrangements were inspired by buildings published during post-World War II reconstruction. However, the new residential type was born with an inherent contradiction, because its envelope had to be built with old manufacturing techniques, since industrialised cladding systems had not yet transferred into the Spanish construction industry. Nevertheless, despite how rudimentary the postwar Spanish envelope systems were, this situation invited technological experimentation informed by ideological influences.