Kursaal Congress Centre and Auditorium

The historic Kursaal casino, next to the river's mouth. Note: the casino building in this photo is NOT the palace, which was demolished, as described in the text.

This was an elegant palace built in 1921, incorporating a casino, a restaurant, a cinema theater, complementary rooms and an 859-seat theater, placed in front of the Gros beach, and next to the mouth of the Urumea river. Part of the interior, including the main hall, was designed by Victor Eusa. The entire building was pulled down in 1973. An empty plot (later called K Plot) was freed. The absence of any architectonic structure in such a privileged site for so many years was remarkable.

At the time the old palace was pulled down, a competition was held to find a replacement. However, the winning project was never constructed due to its complexity.

A new project proposal was submitted in 1972. After a few changes to the design, building work was started in 1975, but after the perimeter wall was complete and the foundations in place, works was halted. The plot of land then passed from private hands (as the Great Kursaal had been private) to public hands, so a public consortium was created for the purposes of constructing a new building.

Once the 1972 project discarded, and facing the possibility of building a great auditorium in the K Plot, six architects were consulted in 1989: Mario Botta, Norman Foster, Arata Isozaki, Rafael Moneo, Juan Navarro Baldeweg and Luis Peña Ganchegui. Of the six projects, the one of Moneo was chosen (the motto of which was "Two beached rocks").

After the project was written down between 1991 and 1994, the works were begun in 1996, and were not finished until 1999. During this period some funding problems arose, mainly because of the refusal of the Basque Government (who paid for a 16% of the total cost) to increase the funds. After these problems were solved, the works were concluded in 1999. The Kursaal Congress Centre was designed by Rafael Moneo and awarded the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 2001.

The initial impact of the buildings upon the Donostian landscape (characterized as it was by early twentieth century French-style architecture) was deemed negative by Donostians: the simplistic, cubic structure clashed with the baroque elegance of the existing sandstone buildings. The significance of the building (opened August 23, 1999, with a concert of the Euskadi Simphonic Orchestra and Ainhoa Arteta) was also eclipsed by the parallel construction of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, which was twice as expensive as the Kursaal. However, after an adaptation period, most citizens came to tolerate the inappropriate style of the Kursaal building, and support the positive role which it plays in the economy, tourism and cultural life of Donostia.