The Pyramid

In 1976, RBTA was commissioned by the Société des Autouroutes du Sud-Est de la France to build this monument on the Catalan highway border between Spain and France. It was not a defined and explicit assignment, but a vague and ambitious idea, a challenge to broach new proposals and experiences: the monotony of endless miles of tar and concrete called for the humanizing of the Autouroutes du Sud-Est.

RBTA enthusiastically accepted this project in light of the practical and theoretical studies dealing with problems of developing form on a larger scale.  Intervention outside of an urban context can have a decisive impact on a given landscape. It is necessary therefore to design in terms of the widest possible geographical scope.

The team realized first of all that the border location of the project was only incidental, anecdotal, simply a pretext to the realization of a masterpiece.

The highway was built to open communications between the two countries and for the passage of people. Catalonia has always been an area of exchange, of transit; catalan culture has always been able to assimilate ideas and passing currents. With the vision of the Pyrenees as an integrating axis of the Catalan territories, the team concentrated its research on the form and design of the landscape.

We wanted to animate and humanize the long strip of highway crossing over the Pyrenees, but the project, because of its magnitude, was not possible. Even when the program was reduced, the new proposal for the Parque de la Marca Hispánica, as a majestic elevated promenade more that a kilometer in length, was still too ambitious, and RBTA finally submitted the design of the Pyramid as its final proposal.

The size and volume of the pyramid (its square base measures 100 meters and is 80 meters high) is accounted for by the amount of soil removed for the construction of the highway. Instead of disposing of the fill in the surrounding valleys, the team proposed that the removed soil be transported to the site. This truncated pyramid with false perspectives and a classical French garden was the team’s response to build in the centre of the Pyrenees, as a work which would be integrated into the landscape yet remain recognizable as a built work which would resist comparison with nature.

The monument at the top of the pyramid pay homage to Catalonia; the four stripes being the motives of its shield and flag, it also symbolizes and materializes international cooperation and fraternity.