Think Sol: Smokescreen or Competition?

The official launch of the competition, which was planned for Friday 27th, will finally take place on Monday 30th September, coinciding with the start of Madrid Architecture Week -this year the events will be brought forward a few days, taking place between 30th September and 7th October.

The competition will have three different phases. First, a period of one month for citizen involvement, when an interactive screen will be installed in Puerta del Sol with the sponsorship of Samsung (Apple's competitor will have its headquarters in the square). Citizens will be able to deliver messages from their smartphones about what he or she feels Puerta del Sol should become.

This first phase will coincide with the Q&A period for the architects who enrol in the competition, and who will be continuously informed of the opinions of citizens who participate through their smartphones (although these opinions are non-binding). Over the course of these period, which will take place throughout October, an exhibition will be held at Puerta del Sol. Approximately half of its content will come from an exhibition that took place more than twenty years ago, on the occasion of the bicentenary of king Charles III, and that was curated by Professor Carlos Sambricio.

The exhibition will provide a 1:10 model that reproduces Puerta del Sol and that will be kept in the new headquarters of the College of Architects of Madrid (COAM).

The second phase implies the development of the proposals of those enrolled in the competition. The deadline date will be in December.
 
Smokescreen or a competition.

Nobody doubts about the good intention of COAM to resolve with that competition the problem which the City Council of Madrid pretends to develop when the last year announced their intentions to remodel this space with terraces and trees over the slab between the square and the Sol station. Even the proposed jury, with a good staff which collects, among others, two international members (Rafael Moneo and Alejandro Zaera), gives a certain solvency about the election of the winner.

The doubts appear reminding what happened recently in the Capital after the tremendous flop which became, the also announced with fanfare, competition for the Gran Vía, taking advantage of all the pomps which appear because of the centenary of its construction.

Besides of that, the competition will award three different projects, not only one, allowing the City Council to choose, because maybe it is presumed that the jury, despite of the excellence of its members, is not skilled enough and the final decision must be taken by the City Council and its technicians.

The competition has no implicit an execution project, it talks about a work process, and the City Council will decide in the last stage if it will be executed, modified, turned into an hybrid among the three other projects or, simply, it does not execute it.

If, besides, during the presentation it was made a small mistake and it was said that in the "Puerta del Sol" square, things could have be done better, recovering the "temple in the Callao square by Antonio Palacios which actually is in Porriño"… anyway, only remind that the temple was in fact in the "Red de San Luis", in front of the Telefónica building, and that the closer squares to "Puerta del Sol" are Callao square and the one of the "Red de San Luis", which was recently re-urbanized by the City Council with pathetic results, and in spite of a granite pavement, leaving a free space for the first and, with two olive trees, for the second (from which only stays one trying to survive to the granite), it could have recovered and re-installed the mentioned temple.

I hope this competition will have a better progress than the last ones, with similar characteristics, and that its execution will be really carried out respecting the jury decision. But one does not know if with so many doubts, previous excuses and excuses about the crisis, the competition (promoted with too much energy) will be, again, a smokescreen or with the result, it will be generated a place where we will can relaxing a cup of café con leche.