Reviled for decades as a symbol of predatory urbanism, the city in the world with the most skyscrapers per inhabitant has just licensed a new tower whose inhabitants will challenge vertigo from its 158 meters high erected on the front line of Poniente beach.
In one of the most drastic reputational shifts in global urbanism, Benidorm first managed to earn its architecture the respect of prestigious critics. It was considered “an oasis of modernist design,” by the Financial Times architecture and design expert, for whom the city represents “a model of density that has not only endured, but has proven to be incredibly influential and yet almost uncredited, probably due to snobbery.”
Furthermore, although its alluvium model still raises suspicions due to the large concentration of people and the consumption of resources that derives from it, prominent urban planners have agreed in appreciating that this growth in height that the reform of the General Plan approved in 1963 promoted, is environmentally more sustainable than growth based on chalets and low-rise houses like that which has occurred in other areas of the Mediterranean coast.
Toni Pérez, mayor of the city and current president of the Provincial Council, stated at the presentation of the book about the architect Pérez Guerras that “that vision from 60 years ago of compressing the soil, caring for it, respecting it and conserving it has proven to be the most sustainable ”.
The new tower, which will be located on the site of the old Gran Hotel Delfín and will retain its name, with its 158 meters distributed over 44 floors, will not reach the top of the local ranking: it will tie for third place with the Lúgano Tower. Although this is the one that comes closest to the sky in this unique Babelian battle, since it rises from a base located 82 meters above sea level, in the Rincón de Loix area.
So its highest point is higher than the tip of InTempo, which will continue to be, for a long time, the tallest construction in Benidorm, and the only skyscraper that exceeds 200 meters (202). With its 46 floors and 256 homes, this peculiar work by the aforementioned Roberto Pérez Guerras, two conjoined towers joined at their highest part by a diamond-shaped connection, is the tallest residential building in Spain, as the four towers of the financial district Madrid that exceed it are dedicated to offices.
Until the costly completion of InTempo in 2021, which took fifteen years to complete due to the financial problems suffered by its promoters as a result of the real estate crisis, the Gran Hotel Bali, open since 2002 at 186 meters high, was the tallest building. tallest hotel in the capital of Marina Baixa, and today it is still the tallest hotel in Europe. It has 776 rooms distributed over 52 floors.
Next April the 18th edition of the Vertical Climb to the Gran Hotel Bali in Benidorm will be held inside, in which last year the Malaysian Soh Wai Ching and the Czech Kamila Chomanicova won, regulars in a curious world circuit of architectural athletics . No one has taken less time than the German Christian Riedl, who spent 4 minutes and 20 seconds in 2016 to ascend its 924 steps.
It might be thought that, once the frontline land was exhausted, Benidorm would conclude its dizzying growth. But it’s not like that. If everything goes as planned, work on the ambitious Levante Ensanche Plan will begin shortly, which will be developed on a large plot with a reserve for a large central park, public facilities, commercial areas and, most visible, between 15 and 20 hotels and 2,200 homes, all in skyscrapers with a minimum height of twenty floors.
