Conversations on art and architecture: Chillida and Moneo in San Sebastián

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There are few cities more intimately linked to their landscape than San Sebastián. Its story is told by the sea and the mountains, by its glorious bay. Its inhabitants are indelibly marked by the connection between natural and artificial and, therefore, it’s unsurprising that this very place gave rise to an artist like Eduardo Chillida.

There’s no greater tribute to his fascination with this city than his sculpture, Peine del Viento.

Years later, when Chillida was looking for a place where his work could capture people’s gazes, their strolls, their embraces, he chose an old farmhouse, its open fields, its forests. The result was Chillida-Leku, a fascinating museum which is currently closed to the public.

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San Sebastian Turismo & Convention Bureau. Kursaal
It was only natural that, at the end of the last century, when the city needed an architect for its Kursaal Congress Centre and Auditorium, Rafael Moneo—winner of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 1996 and an attentive, sophisticated interpreter of architecture—would win the international tender with a bid that firmly focuses on creating a new, brave dialogue between the city and its surroundings.