Swanston Industrial Chimney

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Industrial architecture · Authors: Fernando Navarro

Something that is also visible in Las Palmas, but which perhaps we do not see either: I refer to the old red brick chimney of Arenales, 35 metres high, which is currently located next to the Aguadulce school. Don't you think it is an interesting iconic element?

Interesting and also beautiful. It is a chimney that was part of a flour industry that occupied the entire north side of Plaza de la Feria. It has significant dimensions and yet is little visible because it is in a wasteland associated with the Aguadulce school, as you say, and the only way to access that wasteland is through the school. It is a somewhat chiriquian image. The metaphysical painting of Giorgio de Chirico, in which chimneys like this frequently appear, is a reflection on modern space through the contrast with the inertia of traditional and historical elements that are in that same space but make it strange. On the enclosing fence, the children of the Aguadulce school have painted a mural representing the chimney with an effect that evokes Chirico's paintings. Naively, without mastering the rules of composition, the children have juxtaposed the elements without agreeing on scales, real geometric relationships, or perspective, which, as in Chirico's work, results in a scenography apparently incongruous from the point of view of formal relationships. Las Palmas does not have an important industrial past but Italy does. The architect Aldo Rossi, who takes elements from De Chirico's metaphysical painting, introduced an unused chimney at the Fagnano Olona School in Varese as a symbolic element recalling the city's industrial past. This reminds me of this school, the Aguadulce school, with this unused chimney. As an element of resonance, of suggestion, it is something I find interesting.

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