Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
27
Lanzarote. The artist seemed to have a clear view of what represented the authentic on the
Island: its architecture, its colours and the materials used. He collected pictures of what he
considered to be the most representative elements of the Island’s humanized landscape in the
book
Lanzarote. Arquitectura inédita
. In his own words, in this work ‘a recompilation is
made of what is really interesting in this aspect [the architecture] of our Island, which is now
facing a period of great danger, mostly due to the economic and tourist boom. Due to this fact,
some anarchical building projects are about to begin, which don’t have the least aesthetic
feeling and which are going to spoil the tourist future of the Island, actually they are already
doing so’ (Manrique 2005
25-26;
my translation).
6
In a later writing Manrique explained that this ‘alternative way’ was showed to him by
the Island and its geology themselves: his simple contribution was simply making an
inventory of these peculiarities that architects, builders and farmers could use in the future as
orientation for any new construction (Ibidem: 52). On the other hand, as Carlos Jiménez
Martinez maintains, ‘[the] authenticity canons imposed by Manrique in aspects such as
vernacular architecture, fit, in some occasions, more with nostalgia and spectacles patterns
imposed by tourism industry at a worldwide level, and less with the real contemporary needs
for the inhabitants of those places. The results […] bring serial and filed built up houses,
maintaining just a surface aesthetics, an empty wrapper, so typical of Postmodernism’
(Jiménez Martinez 2007: 8).
Manrique’s selected some elements as original, unique and therefore authentic,
thereby instantly creating a (perhaps involuntary) musealisation and crystallization of those
same qualities that the artist wanted to preserve. That is, having first published a book where
these vernacular features are elevated and found worthy of consideration, and inserting into
the PIOT regulations as to what can be built and developed on the Island has in a way ‘frozen’
Lanzarote in a certain moment in time.
Architecture on the Island hasn’t changed very much in the last 50 years and the
feeling that the visitor gets while driving or walking through the small villages is exactly that
of a staged authenticity. Everything looks maybe a bit too clean, a bit too tidy, a bit too much
‘all the same’ to give an impression of spontaneity. This feeling is reinforced by the striking
difference of the capital Arrecife with all its surroundings. The city isn’t obliged by the PIOT
to follow the same regulations as other municipalities, therefore its appearance is incredibly
different from that of the rest of the Island: relatively high buildings, traffic lights, groups of
flats in just any colour, modern buildings with extensive use of glass, etc. It simply resembles
any other coastal city, and yet while it is in the middle of the Atlantic, it has a certain
Mediterranean flavour.
Although it is hard to maintain that the relatively chaotic look of Arrecife is more
desirable than that of small old villages like Haría, it is also not possible to overlook the fact
6
The original reads, ‘se hace una recompilación de lo verdaderamente interesante en este aspecto de
nuestra isla, que se encuentra en un momento de gran peligro, debido sobre todo a su auge económico
y turístico. Por esa causa, se están comenzando una serie de construcciones anárquicas, sin el menor
sentido estético, que podrían estropear, y de hecho ya lo están estropeando, el porvenir turístico de la
isla’.
