Ensanches’ in the Basque Country”: Was any past layout better?

> The exhibition explores the origins of urban expansion projects while analyzing and comparing—through historical documentation, publications, and an audiovisual installation—the urban expansion projects in Donostia-San Sebastián, Bilbao, and Vitoria-Gasteiz

>The latest exhibition that the Basque Architecture Institute will host at the Convent of Santa Teresa—before it moves to Tabakalera in the fall—will be open to the public through September 27

> Throughout July and September, there will be guided tours with the curator, workshops for families, and a presentation of the book *Permanencias en la arquitectura urbana* by José Ignacio Linazasoro

“Was Any Urban Layout Better?” The question posed by urban planner Manuel de Solà-Morales encapsulates the aim of “Ensanches in the Basque Country”, an exhibition open to the public until 27 September. It is the final exhibition to be hosted by the Basque Institute of Architecture at the Convent of Santa Teresa before the institution relocates this autumn to the third floor of Tabakalera.

Curated by Luis Tena Núñez, the exhibition highlights the ensanches—the urban expansion projects developed in European cities during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to make use of the land freed by the demolition of city walls and to accommodate a rapidly growing population. These new districts were designed to provide levels of habitability and street connectivity that the historic city often lacked. Today, the term ensanche also refers to the urban areas created through that process.

In this sense, the nineteenth-century ensanches represent one of the most significant urban planning operations in the history of the modern European city. Beyond responding to demographic and industrial growth, they established a model of urban expansion grounded in planning, public health, mobility, and the regularity of the street layout.

For much of the twentieth century, however, the critical discourse of the Modern Movement rejected the nineteenth-century ensanches, regarding them as an outdated urban form associated with the bourgeois and industrial city. The traditional perimeter block, the continuity of the street, and the mix of uses were replaced by the principles of functionalist urbanism, based on zoning, isolated buildings, and the separation of urban functions.

From the 1970s onwards, as the exhibition explains, this view began to be critically reassessed. Scholars and urbanists such as Manuel de Solà-Morales argued for the value of the ensanches as flexible urban fabrics capable of adapting to changing needs while preserving their underlying structure. Their reassessment marked a shift in urban planning thinking: instead of replacing the existing city, attention turned towards its rehabilitation and to recognising the enduring relevance of inherited urban forms. In this way, the exhibition proposes a renewed reading of the ensanche as an urban model of exceptional formal, spatial, and functional richness, whose qualities continue to offer valuable lessons for the design of housing and the contemporary city.

From the Cerdà Plan to Contemporary Reappraisal

The exhibition’s opening section presents the ensanche as a planned urban response to the growth of European cities during the nineteenth century, taking the Cerdà Plan for Barcelona as its defining example. Through this landmark project, visitors are introduced to the principal characteristics of the ensanche model and its links to the urban planning traditions of the Greco-Roman, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods. This section also traces the gradual reappraisal of this approach to city-making from the emergence of postmodernism in the 1970s to the present day, a process that led to the recognition of ensanches and their architecture as an important part of the urban heritage deserving of protection and conservation. Historical plans and a selection of publications illustrate this narrative. Particular attention is given to the 1974 San Sebastián Architecture Week, represented by the event’s original poster, designed by the artist Andrés Nagel. Organised by architects José Ignacio Linazasoro and Miguel de Garay through the Cultural Committee of the Basque-Navarre College of Architects, the event marked a turning point in the renewed appreciation of the ensanches. In this gallery, Linazasoro himself reflects on this pivotal moment in a video interview.

Between Art and Education: A New Generation’s Perspective

The exhibition’s exploration of the ensanche continues with a section that analyses and compares the ensanches of San Sebastián, Bilbao, and Vitoria-Gasteiz, examining the degree of development and definition achieved in each of their urban proposals. To this end, the exhibition features an installation comprising three overhead projections onto floor plans of the three ensanches, printed on the gallery floor at the same orientation and scale. By successively overlaying the different planning and construction drawings for each district, the installation enables visitors to compare their chronological evolution and development. It is accompanied by archival material outlining the defining features of each ensanche, together with detailed descriptions.

The exhibition then reminds visitors that the ensanches, now widely recognised as an established architectural and urban heritage, are not simply the product of the visionary ideas of those who conceived the original plans. Rather, these urban districts are the outcome of a long process of collective reflection and enrichment, shaped by successive revisions and refinements that enhanced, sophisticated, and enriched the initial projects.

The exhibition concludes with the results of an artistic mediation programme led by Maushaus, the Basque Institute of Architecture’s education and public engagement team. As part of the project, three contemporary artists collaborated with secondary school students from Vitoria-Gasteiz, Bilbao, and San Sebastián to reinterpret the ensanches of their respective cities. The outcome is a series of three works—Architectures Intertwined, Ensantxe::Player, and Collage—which invite visitors to reflect on urban voids, collective memory, and the traces of our everyday activity in cities that resonate like sounding boards for the rhythms of c

Guided Tours, Workshops, and Book Presentation

The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of activities aimed at families, the general public, and specialist audiences alike.

On 21 July, the Basque Institute of Architecture will host the presentation of Permanencias y arquitectura urbana (Permanence and Urban Architecture) by José Ignacio Linazasoro, who has recently been awarded the Gold Medal for Architecture by the Higher Council of the Associations of Architects of Spain. The book approaches the city as a living repository of memory: a fabric of inherited traces and layers in which design is understood not as starting from scratch, but as the critical interpretation of what already exists, allowing history and contemporary intervention to engage in dialogue without cancelling one another out—a central idea running throughout the exhibition.

Guided tours of the exhibition led by curator Luis Tena will take place on 25 July and 5 September, at 11:30 and 12:30, in both Spanish and Basque.

Family workshops, entitled “Walk About,” will be held on 4 and 11 September at 17:30. Through a series of participatory activities, they invite participants to reflect on the history and growth of the city.

About the Curator

Luis Tena Núñez is an architect who graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Navarra. With 48 years of professional experience leading his own architectural practice in Pamplona and a teaching career spanning 44 years, he has combined architectural practice with a longstanding commitment to urban planning. He has served as Director of Urban Planning for the City of Pamplona and has taught subjects including Introduction to Urban Planning, Urban Morphology, and City and Landscape. Throughout his academic career, he has taught alongside architects such as Rafael Moneo and Juan Navarro Baldeweg, and has been a visiting professor at UNIS in Guatemala. He is also the creator of the audiovisual series 12 Cities, which explores the urban development of major European and American capitals. The series previously featured in the Basque Institute of Architecture’s exhibition Hiru Hiri. His work has received numerous distinctions, including the COAVN Urban Planning Award (1991), and he was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award in 1999.