Echoes from the North: hybrid blocks in Valencia al mar promenade project by Fernando Moreno Barberá (1959-60)

Abstract

The paper presents and analyzes an urban unrealized project hitherto unpublished: the polygon of Valencia al Mar Promenade of 1959-60, authored by the architect Fernando Moreno Barberá. The information on this project -memory and maps- comes directly from the documentation of the municipal record, preserved in the Archives of Planning of the City of Valencia.

The interest of the project is that unlike what was common in the housing estates of the time, its scope is not its peripheral extension but the existing city. We can therefore analyze a significant example, by the institution of the author, about the way are proposed in our country in the late 50s the intervention in the consolidated fabric -reconstruction of the existing city, ultimately- since the beginning of own open order of modern urbanism.

The article connects the Valencia al Mar project with the references that inspire it in England and Sweden, as Stockholm Hötorget, showing that urban practice, in the case of Moreno Barberá, relies on the knowledge of the most important projects of the moment in the European context.

piren a Anglaterra i Suècia, com el Hötorget d’Estocolm, demostrant que la pràctica urbanística, en el cas de Moreno Barberá, es recolza en el coneixement dels projectes més destacats del momento en el context europeu. polítiques públiques i avaluem els inconvenients d’aquest procñes, incloent les relacions sovint incòmodes entre els grups tradicionals de la comunitat i els defensors de les solucions de disseny.