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Chillida's Place, San Sebastian, Basque Country, Spain

Part 2 Project 2004
Kirsty Dewell
 Newcastle University | UK
'I do not represent I ask' Chillida

Captivated at the RA 'Summer Exhibition'; my recent pilgrimage to discover the 'heart' of Basque artist Eduardo Chillida led to the city of San Sebastian.

Travelling across Spain I saw examples of his work in every village, town and city. From his importance, respected character and productive lifespan, emerged the idea to create a celebration of his life and works in his native land.

Mount Igeldo is the place of his remarkable ‘Combs of the Wind’. Set back from the city, a place of connection with the sea, horizon and wind.



This is a project about landscape and its relationship with the sublime work of the sculptor and trained architect Eduardo Chillida.

Located within and along the edge of a small mountain in Chillida’s hometown, San Sebastian Spain, it is difficult to describe the project as a ‘building’. It is neither a gallery nor a museum; it is an experiential and poetic journey through a torn slice of rock.

The artist’s sculptures are large-scale pieces made mostly of iron and granite that are specifically located by the student to explore Chillida’s passion for shape, space, time and nature. Before Chillida’s death in 2002 he said ‘nobody can teach what is inside a person; it has to be discovered for oneself and a way must be found to express it.’ Chillida helped the student to find her way.
2004
EDUARDO CHILLIDA_Empty Mountain, His images and philosophies became the catalysts and approach of the scheme.
CITY_SAN SEBASTIAN, BASQUE, SPAIN A moment to summarise and reveal Chillida's career; to listen to the echoes of space within the sculptures, an intimate sign of identity for San Sebastian, a place of personal experience.
SITE_MOUNT TINDAYA The meeting of wind, sea and waves. The edge of the land and the beginning of an encounter. These works move and breathe with the terrain from which they arise, as their colour and skin is transformed over time.
SETTING_ The exactitude of far-off distances, the horizon that determines and closes. His monumental works depend not on the size of of the matter but rather the internal energy.
RESPONSE TO THE LAND_ The journey through internal spaces in buried into the section of the mountain. A route generates movement of people through a sucession of indoor and outdoor space, a moment of encounter between; man landscape sculpture and sky
GROUND FLOOR PLAN_This place, more than positioning our view, positions our body. Interposing it between earth and sky, facing the sea...A route seems to drop away, laying bare a view of nothing but the blue sky and the immense sea.
ENTRANCE SEQUENCE_ Carved into the mountain the viewer is removed from the horizon and the sky. The sunlight penetrates from above and drifts down to the internal vault.
DISPLAY_The choreography of the pieces sees them as acts within stages, each character has its own presence yet speaks silently to its neighbour. Opening a new landscape from which they breathe.
THE VAULT_The creation of a place between earth and sky, a place formed by the architecture the light from above creates.
TECHTONICS_ The creation of a language and use of technologies to embody the essense of the scheme. Images show the glass louvre facade and section illustrating re-used rock cladding and iron oxide concrete made with fines from the extracted rock.
MONTAGES_The pieces are set against the landscape and building; demonstrating the identity of the architecture. Animating the continual dialogue between internal and external.
MATERIALS_Palette of the scheme
LIGHTING MODEL_The only mark the project leaves at the surface of the mountain are the skylights and the glass façade; penetrating the rock, growing from within the ground, allowing light to stream deep into the plan.
CUT-AWAY SCHEME MODEL_The influence of the original themes; sculpture, man and landscape have led to an architecture situated between the waves and the earth, with discretion and determination the architecture declares its own diversity.
"Sculpture must always show its face and be attentive to everything that surrounds it and make it alive" CHILLIDA
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