The Casa del Marino

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Routes · Subcategory: Rationalism route · Year: 1958 · Authors: Miguel Martín-Fernández de la Torre

The Casa del Marino is an emblematic landmark in the city of Las Palmas, for two reasons. Firstly, because it stands for the meeting point with a second modern period (and not just a revival of the previous one) and secondly, for its extraordinary composition, which can be considered wholly within contemporary formal parametres.

The building is quite a complicated set up, with added on parts to it, including houses, a hotel, clinic, chapel, business premises, organized in articulated compact blocks. This mixed use function and its various shapes fall in line with some contemporary European examples, such as Van der Broek and Bakema, or some Smithson works, with which it perhaps finds its closest cultural connection.

The relative placement of each of the building's different parts to eachother are based on subtle compositive variations which do not follow any harmonious or unified design, but the dialect produced when employing different elements (bannisters, hollows, elevations and strips,...) which have all been built out of the same materials. This system of add-ons provides a kind of tension produced by the freedom of the outlines within the triangular plot on which the building stands. The emphasis of the "bow" at the confluence of the streets of Simón Bolívar and León y Castillo, the inflected curve of the façade over the garage entrance, or the placement and sheer height of the magnificent tower, are some of the elements used as compositive counterpoints to balance up the additive effect of the whole piece while conferring it a precise and fair character of unity.

28.137539, -15.429885