A visit to Josep Lluís Sert’s abandoned Hotel built in 1969 in Cala d’en Serra, Ibiza

In the north of Ibiza lies an abandoned hotel resort complex designed by the acclaimed Catalan Architect Josep Lluís Sert (1902-1983), who was exiled in the United States at the time. The building project was started in 1969, but by the middle of the 1970s, after much of work which had been completed, the project was put on hold since Spain’s fascist government prevented Sert from being accredited as an architect in the Catalonia & Balearic islands region. The project itself was abandoned completely after Sert died of lung cancer in 1983.

After his one one-year Visiting Professorship at Yale University in 1952, he became Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design (1953–1969). There, he initiated the world’s first degree program in urban design; integrated the programs of architecture, planning, landscape and urban design, and taught many of today’s leading architects. During this period he served on the Advisory Board of the newly created Graham Foundation in Chicago, Illinois. In 1961 Sert brought Le Corbusier to the United States to design the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard, and a gallery in the Carpenter Center is now named in Sert’s honor.

Text and photo Olivier Bec

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