La Plaza del Tenis: an autobiographical place

LA PLAZA DEL TENIS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PLACE The article reviews Plaza del Tenis, the public space created in San Sebastián in the mid-seventies by the architect Luis Peña Ganchegui as a prelude to the sculptural units El Peine del Viento, by Eduardo Chillida. This article envisages an autobiographical relationship between Luis Peña and his oeuvre in which, from the reading of Peña’s work that the writer of this paper considers his masterpiece, we illustrate the mechanisms he used repeatedly, in order to define his unique way of thinking the place throughout his career, key words: luis peña ganchegui, plaza del tenis, peine del viento

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“The great complexity of the concept of place lies in the fact that it is neither generic nor universal, but its essence is found in learning, in experience and in the process of adaptation to the new context”1 Josep María Montaner

In the same way as the works of art refer us to an earlier artistic production, and some are able to sum up an era, a style or a line of research, man-made places speak of the history of their construction and there are those which combine in their configuration the entire author’s career. It is in the later category where we can place the public space built by Luis Peña Ganchegui in the western end of Donostia’s bay.(fig.1)

(fig. 1) Luis Peña Ganchegui: Plaza del Tenis (Donostia, 1975)

Regarded as one of the best examples of landscape symbiosis between nature and artifice, la Plaza del Tenis, built in 1976, contains in its design the entire professional and existential background of the architect who created it, and whose birth half a century earlier in Oñate (born there by accident, since his family was from Motrico, which he always considered his hometown) marks the beginning of an itinerary that runs parallel to the urban origin of his masterpiece.

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Josep María Montaner, “La experiencia del lugar. Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Enrico Tedeschi, José Antonio Coderch y Lina Bo Bardi”, Cuadernos de Proyectos Arquitectónicos | DPA | ETSAM (september 2011)

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Background The history of this place started indeed in 1926, the birth year of Luis Peña, as a result of the construction of the underwater sewage system in the borough of Antiguo. The sewage, constructed in connection with the Management Project of the Gardens and Beach of Ondarreta, was protected by a seawall and covered to shape the ground leading to the creation of the promenade, which some time later allowed for the development of the Royal Tennis Club, of which it adopted its name.(fig.2)

(fig. 2) Donostia. Ondarreta Beach in the ’20s.

That planning carried out by Juan Machimbarrena, Municipal Engineer of the City of San Sebastián between 1921 and 1945, whose son Luis Peña coincided with, years later, while studying senior high school at the Marianists in San Sebastián, where he resumed his studies, which he had started two years earlier, once the Spanish Civil War was over. And it is in the early years of the 40’s, which witnessed the birth of a deep and lasting friendship between Luis Peña and Alberto Machimbarrena, when Eduardo Chillida showed particular interest for the end of the Paseo del Tenis. This interest will be crucial, some years later, to the future of this donostiarra’s land’s end, when the sculptor decides, while gazing at the combined effects of air and sea from that urban edge, that the wind should enter a beautiful provincial town like San Sebastián neatly combed. His friendship with Alberto Machimbarrena will have a wide impact on Luis’s cultural education when they both go to Madrid in 1944 to study at university. It is there where he introduced Luis to his circle of friends (prestigious intellectuals such as Juan Benet and Luis Martin Santos, amongst others) and to Pio Baroja’s literary gathering, with whom he got fascinated to the extent of reinterpreting,

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through the reading of his novels, the essence of his Basqueness. The deep impression the Basque writer made on young Peña will be reflected over time in his personality and attitude to life as he was to adopt a committed attitude towards the Basque Country, which will mark his future career. Peña Ganchegui’s admission to the School of Architecture will not be gained till a decade later, in 1955. This fact not only enabled him to broaden his intellectual horizons by attending gatherings, exhibitions, concerts which he had not had the chance to enjoy in San Sebastián – let alone in Oñate or Motrico – but also his stay at the School of Architecture of Madrid coincided with the recruitment of young teachers (Francisco Javier Saenz de Oiza, Alejandro de la Sota, Ramón Vazquez Molezún…) who fostered, among other contributions, an interest in Nordic and organic architecture. This contribution will prove to be essential in Peña’s oeuvre, in tune with the influence the revisionist process of the Modernist Movement led by members of Team X had on him. This fact as Ignasi de Sola Morales2 points out, triggered the evolution from a modern abstract space (visual, ideal, theoretical, generic, undefined) to the existential place of organicism (tactile, concrete, empiric, structured, defined). An evolution, which Peña himself undertook from his academic training till he polished his own style, which identified him with his homeland and his origins. After his Madrilian exile, Luis Peña returns to San Sebastian with a mission: to bring the benefits of the training received to his homeland, and thus rewarding those who enthusiastically sacrificed themselves for him. This is expressed in such a way in a letter written, during the first years of his career, to his mate and friend Fernando Higueras. This mission will become over time the need to join the dictates of modernity with the teachings of tradition, following some roots whose personal interpretation will result in the emerging of a new way of making architecture in the Basque Country. This search will preside over his entire work, which can be regarded as a sum of episodes of the same research, in which every new project reflects aspects imported from the former ones.

El Peine del Viento Years earlier, actually in 1956, while Peña was finishing his first year of training as architect, there had taken place the first reference in writing of Eduardo Chillida’s intention to place a sculpture at the end of Paseo del Tenis , on the occasion of the sculptor’s exhibition at Maeght Gallery in Paris. In the exhibition catalogue, Gaston Bachelard describes the sculptor’s idea: “On the seaside town where he lives, he is going to build, on a crag overlooking the sea, an iron antenna which should vibrate at the wind movements. This iron tree which will grow out of the crag he calls El Peine del Viento”. 3

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Ignasi de Solá-Morales, “Arquitectura y existencialismo: una crisis de la arquitectura moderna”, Annals d’arquitectura 5 (Barcelona: ETSAB, 1991).

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Gaston Bachelard, “Le cosmos du fer”, Chillida’s exhibition, Galerie Maeght, Paris 1956.

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(fig. 3) Eduardo Chillida: Proyecto Peine del Viento II (1968).

The first opportunity to carry out his project presented itself to the sculptor in 1968, as a result of an initiative promoted one year before by the local power group, who intended at first to honour “the celebrated son of this town and prize-winning artist internationally renowned” with the exhibition of his works. This group of influential citizens, however, welcomed the proposal made by Chillida to have a sculpture(fig.3) located permanently on that crag emerging from the sea, next to the seawall. Nevertheless, when the time came, something must have discouraged him (bureaucratic difficulties or technical ones perhaps) which made him think about the possibility of placing the sculpture on the promenade itself, as it is implied in the Project for the paving of the End of el Paseo del Tenis, drafted in June 1968, with the aim of “creating an ambience for the sculpture which is to be placed in the centre of the square at the end of the promenade”4 and carried out by the Head Engineer of Public Works of the San Sebastian City Hall. This proposal, defined (as referred in the report of the project) following the idea expressed by the sculptor himself, consisted of the resurfacing of the sidewalk with irregular slabs of Jaizquibel stone, and the road with asphalt concrete.

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Proyecto de Pavimentación del final del Paseo del Tenis project report, San Sebastián, June 1968.

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Luckily for the city, that project was not carried out and the initiative remained unfulfilled until 1973, when the idea to place the sculpture in the remarkable crag is taken up again. In order to lay out the original site, the City Council commissioned the project to Peña Ganchegui, following the recommendation of Chillida, who had been greatly impressed by the intervention carried out ten years before by the architect in the heart of the Old Town, at the foot of Mount Urgull. La Plaza de la Trinidad(fig.4), built in 1963 to commemorate the centennial of the demolition of the city walls, which had allowed for the expansion of the city in 1863 following the urban expansion area designed by Cortázar, was built by Peña during his short-time position as municipal architect. This intervention would over time become typical of a way of building the public space, and would be pioneer in Spain in the creation of a public square from remains, which turned out to be an essential test case in the subsequent development of la Plaza del Tenis.

(fig. 4) Luis Peña Ganchegui: Plaza de la Trinidad (Donostia, 1963)

Conceived as a tailor–made proposal of the site which hosts it, it has an Aristotelian vision of space in opposition to the Platonic character of Main Squares. La Plaza de la Trinidad meant the transformation of a pre-existing peripheral area into the meeting point between city and nature. This square shares the same basic assumptions with the intervention Peña will carry out at the other end of La Concha’s bay. In the latter, all mechanisms imported form the former project, with which Peña started his public space designs, will be reflected along with others inherited from housing projects, which were also forerunners of the master work we are reviewing.

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A design based on invariants The idea of using the same repertoire of solutions in different projects, constant throughout Peña’s career, is related to the world famous sentence “beware of the person of one book”, which was frequently mentioned by the Basque architect. Attributed to Saint Thomas de Aquinas, this quote is used to warn about the dangers of fanaticism and bigotry, but Peña used it to refer to the advantages of confining oneself, that is, to reduce both the field research as well as the repertoire of resources used, which may be regarded as one of the distinguishing features of his work. There are many aspects of Peña Ganchegui’s oeuvre illustrating this attitude, which may be summarized in the search for unity through reductionism, limiting the repertoire of elements –which in many cases play more than one role– and the number of materials –at times a single material–. This is also present in the approach which leads him to use, in every new project, resources and mechanisms previously used in other works, and thus opening new lines of research which can be found in multiple projects during his career. At times these lines just refer to one part of the work – the storey plan layout, the volumetric treatment, a specific detail … and at other times they include the design of the whole building, thus creating an archetype.

(fig. 5) Luis Peña Ganchegui: Variants of square types with gabled roofs: 2 viv. Aristizabal (Oiartzun, 1963), 6 viv. Arrigain (Oiartzun, 1964), 6 viv. Sagarna (Oiartzun, 1966), 4 viv. Arbelaitz (Oiartzun, 1967)

This is the case of Casa Arrigain, which sets a model for the square floor plan and pyramidal roof and a skylight as a finishing touch. The square floor appears separated from the ground by a clear space framed by a perimeter stone supporting a cantilever house, whose image is defined by a cage made of the combination of perimeter terraces and vertical (steel profiles connected to the roof. This mechanism was used on many occasions in different projects, adding variations which affected the number of storeys (2 to 4), the apartments per storey (1 to 4), the extension of the terraces (restricted in some cases to the top storey or any of the fronts), the shape of the skylight or even the number of

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roofs (pyramidal roof but in one case gable). The type of structure used in Aristizabal, and perfected in Arrigain, represents Peña’s clearest response to the typology of the Basque farmhouse, which bears a cubicle structure sharpened towards the sky and set in a wall-like manner on a hill, with the housing not touching the ground and bearing in-between either a common workspace, a storage area or a transition space, which articulates it with the environment and protects it from natural hazards. The deliberate reduction in the number of resources employed by Peña can be tracked in the Plaza del Tenis, in which in spite of a tailor–made solution adequate to the site which hosts it, previously employed solutions can be found.

A preamble in tune with the sculptures Peña disclosed more than once that the key element of his intervention at the end of El Paseo del Tenis was “to build a preamble to the sculptures in a place which is the beginning and end of the city… like a symbol of a bond between the city and nature. A city ending with an absolute, which is the sea”. 5 What he did not use to say was that when he handed in his proposal in January 1975, the sculptures were not defined yet6; Chillida still thought of installing just one single sculpture, which had no definite shape or scale. It was clear for Peña, however, that the scale difference between the natural environment and any other object that might be placed there, would make it look ridiculously small, its presence unnoticed in the immensity; hence, the need to define the preamble, a smaller scale area in accordance with the sculpture intervention.(fig.6)

(fig. 6) Plaza del Tenis (Donostia, 1975). Plan of the Execution Project, delivered on January 1975

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Jesús Bazal y otros, Haze Orrazia. El peine del viento. Eduardo Chillida. Luis Peña Ganchegui (Pamplona: Q Editions, 1986).

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Resulta elocuente en este sentido el hecho de que las esculturas no aparezcan representadas en el proyecto.

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But in order to guarantee the adequate contemplation of Chillida’s sculpture, as important as reducing the scale of the area was to make the intervention disappear in order to prevent its presence from interfering with the reading of the sculpture and to avoid competing with it. This premise is fulfilled by inextricably binding the intervention up with nature, as if it was a pre-existence, as if it had always been there. To do so, he makes an elevation change, a high plateau, hiding from the promenade the presence of the sculptures and frames a small square where the eyes meet the rocks. By doing so, he sets a more intimate scale, without using any more resources than the definition of an artificial topography made of one single material.(fig.7)

(fig. 7) Plaza del Tenis (Donostia, 1975): Overview of the topography hiding the sculptural unit.

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(fig. 8) Oil painting, painted in Madrid by Luis Peña Ganchegui, during his University days.

Resorting to artificial topography The use of outlines recreating orographic reliefs is one of the recurrent mechanisms in Peña’s work, both with regard to the gradient and the volumetry, which gives the finishing touch to some of his buildings. An idea already present in his youth paintings, in which Motrico’s town houses are filtered through a geometric decomposition joining some elements with others within a large mosaic of polygonal shapes. With foresight, he links architecture and nature into a continuous whole, in which the silhouettes of the roofs blend in with the landscape.(fig.8) This link is found again in the roofing of 24 viviendas Aizetzu (Mutriku 1964), 28 Casas Rosas (Mutriku 1966), Colegio María y José (Zumaia, 1966), or viviendas Elu (Mutriku, 1969), which become true artificial mountain ranges. Artificial topography takes the shape of tiered seats, which he first designed a decade earlier for the Plaza de la Trinidad project (donostia 1963), and used again in Casa Imanolena (Mutriku 1964) (fig.9) to define the base upon which the roofing rests. Later on he used it once more in Iglesia de San

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Francisco (Vitoria 1968), both in the perimeter and the choir area, as well as in some projects which were never carried out like Plaza Auditorium (Irun 1969), which was to house the audience and solved the problem of the slope, and Plan Silvestre Perez (Mutriku, 1974). The tiers’ resource will later on be transferred to Plaza de los Fueros (Vitoria 1979), in order to create its own domain, setting a new limit to public space; to Sant Joan (Lleida, 1982) to adjust the square plane to the height difference and provide access to the elements laid out on it, and to Parque de la España Industrial (Barcelona, 1983) to establish a slope to bridge the existing level height between Sants railroad station and the esplanade where the park lies, which narrows on two of their sides, and a coastal rim is designed next to the sheet of water allowing it to house in its twists: zones, fountains, sculptures and lighting elements.

(fig 9) Luis Peña Ganchegui: Casa Imanolena (Mutriku, 1964)

The geometry of his squares’ tiers reminds of Alvar Aaalto’s architecture, which Eduardo Mangada, Luis’s friend and classmate and with whom he shared an architect’s office in the 60’s, does not hesitate to regard as the leading figure of his generation ‘because he was the man belonging to the

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Modern Movement who had not submitted to it’7. However, the mechanism of the tier as a tool to design a public space, which establishes limits to it, while provides it with continuity and creates a space from which one can see without being seen, had been known by Peña since his childhood in Plaza Churuca in Motrico, as the huge staircase leading to the entrance of the church designed by Silvestre Perez in 1798, was occasionally used as tier seating from which to watch the shows taking place during the days of festivities.(fig.10)

(fig.10) Mutriku: Aurresku in Churruca Square.

The lesson of Churruca Square Motrico’s church square ranks high in Peña’s biography, as it represents his earliest link with his future profession, since it was through his father’s preoccupation over the end section of the church, which he found poor, and through the references to the author, Silvestre Pérez, that he found out about the existence of a trade which dealt with designing buildings. And it was precisely next to Churruca Square, where in 1961 he designed his first important work as a self-employed architect: ChurrucaIparraguirre houses. Built on the garden ground of his father’s family house (next to the neoclassic block) and for which he was recognised with Aizpurua Architecture Award in 1965.

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Conversación personal con Eduardo Mangada (Madrid, 26 de marzo de 2011), incluida en: Mario Sangalli: “Luis Peña Ganchegui: El Arquitecto como Lugar” (tesis doctoral, Departamento de Arquitectura, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de San Sebastián, 2013)

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It is inevitable to imagine that, before Peña’s intervention, the image projected by Plaza de la Trinidad –an empty urban space caused by the demolition of some old buildings and used as an improvised jaialai and temporary bola-toki (traditional Basque bowling alley), with the spectators among the ruins– was what made Luis Peña relive scenes from his youth in Plaza Churruca. Those memories provided him with the idea of the tiers to distribute the spectators around the probaleku (the place where Basque rural sport competitions are held), sewing fragments found in the backyard, including the mountain which he extends and articulating it with the city.

Chaining of articulated spaces Articulation is a recurrent device in the works of Peña. It is expressed both in the compositional design as well as in the spatial configuration, adopting in the latter the role of a filter between the public domain, which is represented by the city and the private one, which in Trinidad is represented by the probaleku ; in Plaza del Tenis by the small square (with the sculptures presiding over it) and in the residential buildings, the living space. In this last case, the filter is provided by the itinerary among the common areas, including porches, indoor streets and inner courtyards which give rise to some developments showing a great deal of spatial richness such as the ones offered by the yard of the 24 viviendas Aizetzu (Mutriku, 1964), the sequence indoor-outdoor of the 33 Casas Rosas (Mutriku, 1965) and the walkways of the 28 viviendas Elu (Mutriku, 1969), turned into interior streets in 46 viviendas Iparraguirre and 20 viviendas Arbide, built in 1972 in Motrico and Oyarzun respectively. The transition public-private, which in La Trinidad goes from the threshold of the square through the alley linking up to 31 de agosto street; in the case of Plaza del Tenis is defined through the spatial configuration of the urbanization which may resemble that of a vessel, which welcomes us at the stern and leads us along the starboard deck to the foredeck.(fig.11) In the foredeck, which is the raison d’être of the whole urban development work, the space is defined by means of a dialogue between the intervention and the pre-existing elements –, a dialogue both with the close ones (the rocks dotting the coastline, the sculptures inhabiting it and the waves crashing the shoreline) and with the faraway ones (Santa Clara island, the bay that is home to it, the city looking out onto it), and by establishing a sequence of concentric areas of fragmented limits, which helps its dwellers to interact with the universe around it. He had done something similar in Plaza de la Trinidad, when he managed to incorporate the complex and heterogeneous space surrounding the void, using a free element layout in a fragmented form, as if they were autonomous objects whose outline, scale and layout make them interact, establishing an organic open limit of varying depth and heterogeneous definition.

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(fig.11) Plaza del Tenis (Donostia, 1975): The seafront promenade as a filter between the city and the sculptures.

A well thought-out definition of the spatial envelope The organic limit defining the Plaza de la Trinidad relates to another of the aspects which is a recurrent feature in Peña’s work: the envelope with layers which may be seen in many of his buildings, in which the envelope becomes complex and adopts different configurations. The two main configurations were already suggested in his first work, la Torre de Vista Alegre (Zarauz, 1958) built in collaboration with Juan Manuel Encio before graduating. The envelope folds up over itself, adopting a sectional fretwork pattern which in other projects appears on the floor plan as in the funeral chapel which he did as his Final Degree Project in 1959, in Fabrica de Conservas Peña (Araia, 1964) or in Iglesia de SanFrancisco (Vitoria, 1968). In addition to being a resource used in profiled walls, in other examples the envelope with layers appears in the presence of lattices separated from the façade as if it was a second skin, which in Vista Alegre meant a kind of outer shell and is perfected in a more subtle manner in later works though the combination of side by side terraces with serial vertical bars which define the galleries. This formulation which started in 1961 with the never executed project Vivienda unifamiliar in Yanci was, however, used as a fragmented element to build Viviendas Churruca-Iparraguirre (Mutriku, 1961)(fig.12) and is used again in 12 viviendas Urresti (Mutriku, 1964). It is further developed in Arrigain (Oiartzun, 1964) as a united image of the building housing the dwellings and is perfected in Zubi-Ondo (Oiartzun, 1964) bearing reminiscent of medieval times as the element to accentuate its end. Besides, this mechanism allows him to disguise the eave and to establish, though virtually, some kind of continuity between the façade and the roofing. It also enables

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Peña to solve the equation of integrating the Basque farmhouse archetype, which bears plenty of gable roof and quite a projecting eave, with the abstract compositions of modern imagery. In other words, to make the dictates of modernity compatible with the local cultural and weather conditions.

(fig. 12) Luis Peña Ganchegui, Churruca-Iparraguirre dwellings (Mutriku, 1961)

Continuity between façade and roofing The virtual gallery was one of the solutions Peña employed to incorporate the pitched roof and avoid the presence of the traditional eave. The other solution arises out of la Vivienda bifamiliar Olazabal (Mutriku, 1963) and is provided by the use of slate (Peña borrowed it from two neighbouring mansions, according to the project report) and lies in removing the eave, and in prolonging the roof on the façade thanks to the possibility of having a vertical arrangement of the slate. The solution provided in Olazabal, which allows covering broken perimeter floor plans with simple volumetric roofing

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without involving the façade of the building, will be of key importance in projects such as 28 viviendas elu (Mutriku, 1969), Donosti-Zarra (donostia,1968) or 28 viviendas elu (mutriku, 1969). This also shows us the importance that the choice of materials has in Peñas’s work and his respectful attitude towards its adequate use, which allows him to design very consistent solutions. This is clearly seen with slate, which will become an essential ally to carry out works such as el Levante de Reyes Católicos (Donostia , 1963) whose top floor will house his office from 1968; la Iglesia de San Francisco (Vitoria, 1964), just a large roofing on top of a public square representing a place of worship(fig.13) and Viviendas Cortazar (Vitoria, 1974). Just as flagstone will play a fundamental role in the storage warehouses for la Unión Farmaceutica Guipuzcoana in Eibar and Donostia (1971 and 1973, respectively) will granite be crucial in Plaza del Tenis (Donostia, (1975) and later on in Plaza de los Fueros (Vitoria, 1979).

(fig.. 13) Luis Peña Ganchegui, San Francisco Church (Vitoria, 1968).

Material Unity In this respect, la Plaza del Tenis follows the teachings of la Plaza de la Trinidad, in which the construction of the tiers was provided by the existence of cobblestones used in the paving of the streets and found in the municipal warehouse, in order to achieve a material unity which will help confer an identity to the intervention, and at the same time fit in with the environment. Twelve years later, in order to build the tiered plateau which functions as a seat for Mount Igueldo, whose presence is suggested prior to the strata forming it, Peña resorted again to modular pieces as single material. As there was no more limestone waste pieces, and as he was forced to intervene in a site more exposed to severe weather, and being in need of providing the intervention with a presence which allowed it to be on equal terms with the strata and rocks conforming the site, la Plaza del Tenis was made of unpolished Pink Porriño granite, in pieces, with square sections of 20 cm side and variable lengths

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coming from the quarries in Galicia. These leftovers came from the cutting of great blocks which were used to determine the boundaries of agricultural parcels and vineyards. As it was the case with slate and cobblestones in the aforementioned projects, the material he used determines, with different parameters, the conditions to be followed by the design, and it provides character to the intervention, building a three-level terraced artificial topography, connected in a continuous manner by 60x40 cm tiers, which are reduced at some point to make 30x20 cm steps to allow free movement between them. The selected granite provided the colour Peña was looking for, so that his intervention could rhyme with the wall which delimits el Paseo de la Concha, which is made of pink-coloured stones, while the rugged finish, characteristic of nature impact, provides the right texture to act as a mediator between the city’s domesticated space and the indomitable greatness of the natural world, manifested here in all its splendour.(fig.14)

(fig. 14) Plaza del Tenis (Donostia, 1975)

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The Aesthetic of the Basque soul The sobriety and radical nature of the architectural language used by Peña Ganchegui, in addition to his vernacular contribution (present in stones, through the craft tradition) also reflects formal connotations with the expression of his people, as he links it with the Basque style advocated by Oteiza, in his research on the cultural and historical specificity of the Basque people8. This Basque style was present in the artistic production of the members of the Euskal Eskola (Basque School), to which Peña belonged and whose architectural dimension he led. In his organic abstraction, we can find clear connotations with the formal resources of Chillida’s work in the geometric outline of artificial topography, as well as in the stones framing the seven boreholes driven into the underwater sewage, already disused, which turn the sea rage into vertical pumps, recycling the bastard element and turning it into an attraction itself. They are also found in the stones, which solve the encounter of the stone strips separating the lower level of the topography (dividing, like ridges and joint roofs, the roof rainwater which are represented by the seafront promenade and their widenings). As Mª Soledad Alvarez Martinez rightly describes as ‘a great interest in the form, whose conception and development take place in close reliance with the matter and in an intimate relation with space where it set. These are dynamic mighty and constructive forms, in which the geometric rigour is beaten by a kind of organic nature –arising from the very core of the matter– and by the vital life-force transmitted by the modulating action of the gesture’.9 A coordinate overlapping certainly contributing to the happy symbiosis that Plaza del Tenis depicts.(fig.15) This happy relationship between architecture and sculpture that also embraces nature, establishes a dialogue, which would not have been possible without the existence of an attitude frequently mentioned10: the romantic spirit’s own gaze, whose perception of landscape allows the contemplation of nature’s grandeur and mystery and which can gain the sublime, observing it as something to be understood and interpreted instead of being exploited. In short, an attitude fundamental to discover the genius loci –the protective spirit of the place– the spirit every site needs to become a place. A place intended by Peña, like an extension of society and of himself; like a bridge connecting the individual with the universe and, in his particular case –through his roots– with the land of his ancestors. Including the own Luis Peña, who cites Novalis whenever needs to explain the relationship of the intervention regarding the nature, and more recently Iñaki Abalos, in his article Materiae Genius, published on July 14, 2007 in the newspaper El País, in advance of the book published to mark the delivery of the Gold Medal of the Spanish Architecture Peña Ganchegui in 2004.

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Jorge Oteiza, Quosque Tendem..! Ensayo de interpretación estética del alma vasca, (Zarautz, Colección Azkue, 1963).

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Mª Soledad ALVAREZ MARTINEZ, “Oteiza y Chillida: La escultura vasca entre el proyecto moderno y la impronta del pasado”, Revista Internacional de los Estudios Vascos, volumen 42.1, Donostia 1997.

10 Including the own Luis Peña, who cites Novalis whenever needs to explain the relationship between the intervention and the nature, and more recently Iñaki Abalos, in his article Genius Materiae, published on July 14, 2007 in the newspaper El País, in advance of the book published to mark the delivery of the Gold Medal of the Spanish Architecture Peña Ganchegui in 2004.

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(fig. 15) Plaza del Tenis (Donostia, 1975). Plan of the intervention as it was built.

Picture Credits: All images courtesy of Archivo Peña Ganchegui, except those listed below:: fig. 2.- Gregorio G. Galarza, San Sebastián: monte Igueldo y playa de Ondarreta (tarjeta postal), Koldo Mitxelena Kulturunea Library (http://www.guregipuzkoa.net/photo/1080203) fig. 3.- Archivo Eduardo Chillida (http://www.peinedelviento.info/) fig. 10.- Archivo General de Guipúzcoa. Diputación General de Guipúzcoa (Photo: Indalecio Ojanguren, 1962)

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