On the limits of formal abstraction. The paradigm of the Plaza Nueva in Seville

Abstract

This contribution analyzes the project for the Plaza Nueva in Seville (18525), in addition to its antecedents, contemporary examples and subsequent development, as representative of the deep relationships that bind together urban morphologies and social, political and economic realities. At the time, this initiative provided a specific form for an idea of the city typical of the nineteenthcentury bourgeoisie, just when it reached political predominance and was already able to present itself as the general interest of the private owner. Although the new Plaza represented the arrival in the city of the comfortable, civilized and ordinary, only sixty years later the shift from an abstract ideal of order and hygiene to the ornamental exuberance of regionalism had caused this architecture of the perimeter to be deemed as cold, monotonous and testimony to the decline of the arts. The consequence of this estrangement was a controversy between institutions and professionals that was resolved in the first half of the 20th century with the loss of the internal coherence of the space and the tertiarization and speculation with the buildings in the square, whose abstract enclosure had been able to contain said phenomena up to that moment.