L'Illa Diagonal Building

Manuel de Solà-Morales (1)
Rafael Moneo (1)
Manuel de Solà-Morales
Manuel de Solà-Morales i Rubió
Rafael Moneo
Rafael Moneo Vallés

The site now occupied by L'Illa was a gap between the city that is still faithful to the Cerda Plan and, therefore, respectful of the concept of continuity that accompanies the idea of building - closed, and that other one, the result of the planning of the sixties and seventies, characterised by discontinuity and open building.

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Filling this void by converting it into a link between the aforementioned sectors of the city was the purpose that gave shape to the project and hence the urban planning strategy established in the proposal it developed, winner of an international competition held in 1986, was based on the construction of a longitudinal building parallel to the Diagonal, behind it a park where a hotel was to be built in its day and where today a convention centre and schools are already standing.

Michael Morán / OTTO
Michael Morán / OTTO

Constructing a building more than three hundred metres long was no easy task. So that such an important volume would not be perceived as an undifferentiated mass, both the ground plan and the profile were broken up and segmented, and the building was perforated by means of transversal passages at all those points where attention to the various urban features required it.

Michael Morán / OTTO

The profile of the building, on the other hand, follows the hierarchy of the transversal roads, and the greater height given to the building in Numancia orients it so that the slender façade becomes a celebration of the access to the city. At a time when it can be said that the post-modern movement is exhausted and when the neo-technological alternative produces buildings of dubious image and not always good use, the l'Illa building is committed to the values of an architecture with the will to create a city, which is expressed by maximising the most characteristic elements of the language of modern architecture.

Michael Morán / OTTO
  • III BEAU
  • Estudio Rafael Moneo
  • Michael Morán / OTTO
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41.389756891 2.1352139599 9b9194c8-6b29-4ba5-8e33-ac575e7e7cbd Built
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