It's hard to forget the impact of economic crises on architecture; however, artist Jorge Isla reminds us with his series of photographs capturing the iconic High Performance Sports Center in the Balneario de Panticosa in Spain designed by architect Álvaro Siza. Construction on the site began at the start of the 21st century, but, due to heavy snows and Spain's financial upheaval, was abandoned shortly after.
Isla shares details about his project below:
Anatomy of an Exodus reveals the ironic relationship between grandiose architectural projects and utopian ideas about past eras as seen in an abandoned 2008 project nestled in the Pyrenees mountains of Aragon-- the High Performance Sports of Balneario de Panticosa designed by architect Álvaro Siza, the first foreigner to win Spain's National Prize for Architecture.
The series of images begin inside the structure and end outside of it, painting a picture of faded dreams and highlighting the raw reality of the surrounding environment's impact on the building.
Isla's project began as a photographic series. His intent wasn't to capture an ephemeral moment, but rather, generate a reliable and accurate portrait of an architectural spectacle that became an enigma of its time.
The images aren't showing the fanfare and dazzle of the laying the first stone of an architectural project. Quite the contrary, they capture a time long after that moment, an example of what photographic historian David Campany calls delayed photography. This is photography that takes viewers through a place where things have happened and highlights the effects of global activity. It differs from the instantaneous spontaneity of most photography and illustrates a different relationship with memory and history.
