Square, Ibiza

In his office, in the centre of Barcelona, Iñaki Alday comments that the proposal he and his French wife, Nathalie Jover, came up with is no straightforward solution. 'The jury report could have ended in a judgement about who had proposed the most attractive paving, but that is not what our design is about, which also means that it is not easy to realize.' Nearly all their commissions come from outside Catalonia and, grim-faced, Alday starts to explain: 'A design can't win here if it touches a sore spot. Catalan politicians and their bureaucrats are lazy and don’t want to have to tackle problems. So the regional institutional clients respond by creating nothing but mediocre architecture!' All in all he is quite happy to have obtained another commission outside his own region.

At present a disorderly road runs under the monumental walls of the Saint Peter bastion, with undefined parking spaces and a run-down transformer kiosk. It is a ragged edge between the historical town and the 19th-century extra-mural extensions. In the Sota Vila ('Under the Town') proposal the public spaces leading up to the walls are made pedestrian friendly and upgraded. The significance of this design lies in non-visible infrastructure: a diagonal route that ties together the various little squares in the low-lying part of town; a street-level entrance to the underground car park that is in exactly the right spot; and a public lift inside the bastion.

It is near the bastion that the intervention will be most visible, for it is here that the architects have projected a new pedestrian access to the walled city. The ramparts will acquire a striking plinth in the form of sculptural ramps and a wide, cantilevered balcony. While the connecting role of the new pedestrian route, a few metres above street level, may not be entirely clear, it is obvious that something is happening in this open space. Arriving at the corner underneath the balcony, the pedestrian encounters a light shaft, a geometrical perforation that engages in a dialogue with the solidity of the town walls. There is an allusion here to the Tindaya land art project of the renowned Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida. In order finally to overcome the barrier effect of the walls of the citadel, Alday and Jover make them accessible and tangible from below.