"Benidorm might not please everybody but, by God, it pleases a lot." — Pauline Snowden
City portrait/ This is the portrait of an atypical city, especially for it's architecture. Considered as one of the european cities with more skyscrapers (more that 20 buildings exceeding 100m), Benidorm leaves no one indifferent. It's loved and hated in equal part, although in recent years it has opened an interesting debate regarding the benefits on environmental sustainability issues that achieve this type of cities, especially on the coast.
Sustainability/ Contrary to what happens in housing complexes and isolated or detached houses, in which a large expense and energy is needed to meet the demand of a few (plus a lot of ground), in skyscrapers everything is centralized for a large population, so the energy and resources consumption per head is much lower.
Expansion/ With relative low budgets and the desire to accommodate as many tourists as possible, this city grew very fast since the 50's and 60's, when there was only small and well-kept hotels called "trams". Since the expansion, the results in the constructions were highly variable, usually bad but with honorable exceptions.
Personal view/ Benidorm is very interesting for me because its architectural diversity. It has crappy buildings and very interesting buildings, at least from a architectural or photographic point of view. In the series I try to show the spatiality of the city, some contrasts, the relationship with its inhabitants, and of course the feelings I had while touring the city for several weeks on different times over three years.
The project has been awarded with the Lux Oro Award in Architecture & Design.