Atrio Alhambra: dismantling process of the city-monument pair

Abstract

The “Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife” (PAG) convened in 2010 an international ideas contest to run the “Atrio de la Alhambra”. The project presented on second round by the architects Alvaro Siza Vieira and Juan Domingo Santos was the winner but today, almost 8 years later, it has not been executed. The context of this impasse is an open controversy in which civil organizations, patrimonialists, professional colleges, the PAG itself and even ICOMOS (International Council of Monuments and Sites / UNESCO) have intervened.The following work aims to historicize the mismatches that the Atrium project claim to solve, through the different configurations assumed in the Plan Director 2007-2020 as the 2010 international contest, replacing some of the most reliable arguments that result in the controversy and a contribution from an architectural and urbanistic component through the city-monument hypothesis as an indissoluble pair.