Poética del abandono. Siza en Panticosa - Iñaki Bergera

In 2001, Álvaro Siza was commissioned to design a sports hotel in the Panticosa Spa, a privileged enclave in the Aragonese Pyrenees. Designed to mitigate the visual impact on the landscape, the result is a powerful, fragmented volume that dialogues with the sobriety and dynamism of the interior spaces, articulated by the presence of light. In 2008, a few weeks before the completion of the works, the developer went bankrupt, swept away by the global financial crisis. Siza’s building was then left at the mercy of the elements and the forces of nature.

The abandonment of architectural projects, leading to deterioration and anticipating ruin, is one of the central themes that occupies the attention of Iñaki Bergera, who throughout his career has made a visual record of the scars that mark the territory and signal a conflict with architecture. In 2011, Bergera began photographing the gradual deterioration of the High-Performance Sports Center and the adjoining aparthotel. The result presented here —along with sketches and the testimony provided by the Portuguese architect himself— shows that, far from being in conflict, Álvaro Siza’s abandoned architecture at Panticosa shares a strange and intense bond with the territory that points to a new poetics of abandonment.