Dialdas Building

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Civil architecture · Year: 1966 · Authors: Javier Díaz-Llanos, Vicente Saavedra

On the plot now occupied by this building, one of the most important sites in the historic centre of Santa Cruz, there had been a property built in 1862 designed by Manuel Oraá, highly significant in the repertoire of the city's romantic classicism. A century later, this important building was ruined due to a fire.

In 1962, architects Javier Díaz-Llanos and Vicente Saavedra were commissioned, at the initiative of the businessman of Hindu origin Balram Dialdas, to draft the project for a new building now intended to house various commercial premises and a hotel that took advantage of the excellent location of the plot, in the very heart of the city's commercial area and very close to the port. 

The architectural proposal shown is very sensitive to this location and to the typological and volumetric characteristics of the neighbouring buildings. The presence of the Palacio de Carta, an 18th-century building characterised by its basalt stone façade, as well as a "modern" tall building on the other side, posed a fitting problem that was resolved with great skill.

The hotel use was articulated through a U-shaped structure oriented towards the neighbouring courtyard of the Palacio de Carta and taking as a reference its spectacular and historic balcony. To solve the problem of two protruding storeys, these were attached to the tall building below.

Moreover, the Dialdas connects the two streets it faces through an intelligent commercial passage on the ground floor that allows a centred entrance to the hotel.

This work represents an insertion into a historic environment with which it dialogues very respectfully with the monumental architecture on one side, without renouncing the application of a contemporary formal language, where materials such as concrete and wood fit perfectly.

The Dialdas building was completed in 1966, successfully and seemingly easily resolving the transition between buildings of different eras and heights.

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