The physical remnants of economic abandonment provide a challenging new context for architecture. Spain’s Costa del Sol is rarely considered a place of interest among architects, but look beyond the sun, sea, sand and siestas, and a fascinating world of socio-economic, topographic, architectural and cultural narratives are revealed.

Costa del Sprawl is an ongoing project which looks to understand the relationship between the population and urban environment, before developing strategies to shape the future of the area. Key themes tackled in this project are; the urban sprawl resulting from the 60s & 00s property booms; the structures, infrastructure and communities left abandoned and unfinished since the onset of the Euro crisis; the social consequences of a free market approach to urbanism on the diverse and largely immigrant population; a community driven approach to the future development of the area. While this project examines these themes in relation their specific context, many are relevant and transferable to problems across in Europe and much of the world. The economically driven development model continued to sprawl up the steep hills with increasingly large and inward looking gated communities. The Euro crisis has since seen the developers abandon the area, leaving residents with unfinished urbanizations and inadequate facilities for public and civic life to thrive.

To showcase this research we held an impromptu exhibition in an abandoned structure in August 2016 with the ambition of starting the debate among the local residents about the possible futures for the area. The exhibition contained urban and architectural analysis of the area, artworks, illustrations and 20 shortlisted proposals for future uses of the structure which were submitted in response to an open call for ideas.

The project aimed to produce work which is relatable to the local residents, communicating the existing characteristics of the area in engaging ways in order to start more profound conversations about the importance of the built environment on the unique and diverse resident communities of the Costa del Sol.

Costa del Sprawl 2016 was completed with the help of a research grant from The West Yorkshire Society of Architects.