Tucked away in a sleepy corner of northeast Spain, the town of Teruel has long been a tourist destination for buffs of medieval architecture and history. Peppered with 12th-century bell towers distinguished by Mudéjar-style brickwork, Teruel earned a World Heritage site designation in 1986. Even so, the municipality is more interested in charting new architectural traditions than embalming its past. In 2003, for example, David Chipperfield and Barcelona’s b720 Arquitectos won a competition to design a passageway through an ancient stone wall separating the train station from a picturesque promenade, and the progressive results—all Cor-Ten steel and severe lines—garnered industry awards as well as a place in the 2006 exhibition On-Site: New Architecture in Spain at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “The project transformed that part of town,” explains Fermín Vázquez, principal of b720 Arquitectos. “It also exposed the local government to the potential of Modernism to accentuate the historic fabric and to be an asset in its own right.”
So a few years later, when planning to rehabilitate Plaza del Torico, an elegant square in the heart of the historic district, the city asked Vázquez to propose a plan that would modernize the paving and lighting systems as well as the overall aesthetic. “Just removing the old systems and updating the pavers would have been a good solution, because the square is so picturesque. But to their credit, the clients were insistent about adding a contemporary intervention,” he says.
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