El Plan Bonet, 1961-64. La condición del paisaje en la ordenación del desarrollo turístico de La Manga del Mar Menor

In the rural context of Murcia, the acceptance of modernism was a late and incidental phenomenon. Around 1960, however, there was a short period full of expectations when some masters of Spanish architecture worked in the touristic development of its unspoiled coast. Among them, Antoni Bonet was assigned to start the planning of La Manga, a 24 km sand bar that lies between the Mediterranean Sea and the Mar Menor. In this Plan, Bonet reverted to the approach of Le Corbusier urbanmodels to elaborate his preliminary ideas: autonomy and hierarchy of the dwelling clusters, backbone road, civic center by the sea, treatment of the waterfront with artificial islands. In order to minimize the impact in the dune ecosystem a partially raised road was laid out. Also to free up land, the Plan concentrated the building in compact and closed units of dwellings, commercial spaces and facilities organized around 16-floor towers repeated every 2 km. Inspired in the same landscape interpretation in which is based Le Corbusier’s Buenos Aires Plan (1929), Bonet underlined the height of the towers as landmarks that opposing the horizontality of the sea marked the presence of the clusters when seen from the opposite shore.