ABSTRACT

The Kursaal Congress Center, designed by Rafael Moneo, occupies a dramatic site in the city of San Sebastián on the north coast of Spain.1 The building is located at the mouth of the Urumea River, precisely at the boundary between a dense urban condition and the open sea—between city and nature. The design of the Kursaal was developed both in response to this unique situation and as an intentional remaking of it. In describing this project, Moneo writes that “architecture discovers the site, reveals it and makes it evident” and, concurrently, that “the site is where the specific object—the building—acquires its identity and finds its dimension, its unique, unrepeatable condition.”2 In this case, the architecture expresses its identity through two large, slightly tilted translucent glass volumes, distinct yet linked, that Moneo compares to two enormous rocks left stranded on the beach by the movement of the river.3