Civic portal: a town much transformed by tourism is given a new heart with a bold but economical civic centre.

Benidorm has no great reputation as a model of urban thinking. The city of towers we see now was largely created by a wild and chaotic market to cater for cheap package holidaymakers from northern Europe, whose bearleaders have transformed the Costa Blanca from a chain of picturesque small towns and villages to a continuous booming holiday resort in less than half a century. But for all the culture of beer, fish and chips, beer, wurst, beer and steak frites, local communities still exist, often hidden by the mushroom growth of tacky hotels, bars, restaurants and apartment blocks.

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A few years ago, the citizens of Benidorm decided to stop hiding in the chaotic tourist jungle and assert urban sense again. They chose to build a new town hall as a mark of civic pride, and as a necessary administrative headquarters of a community now totally transformed: vastly bigger and more prosperous than it was in the 1950s. It was back then that planners envisaged transforming the bed of the Rio Seco, the (usually dry) river that gave the settlement its original raison d'etre. A culvert was made to deflect winter floods, so a wide flat area was suddenly made available in the middle of town. Much of it was taken up with a park, but a new square was planned, with an underground public car-parking garage below it. The project ground to a halt, and for years the unfinished square was an unsatisfactory indeterminate space between city and park.

Instead of trying to complete the square in conventional fashion, the new architects decided to house the office and administrative element of the town hall in a great steel bridge, 65m in span and 15m wide that rests on supports in the one- and two-storey parallel concrete elements that define the square below. In the lower elements are entrance, formal spaces, vertical circulation and services connections to car park below and offices on top.

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Above, the bridge is three storeys high. Structurally, it consists of two trusses, so floor plates are completely free of columns, and are designed to be laid out to be easy to change. Behind the massive steel structural members of the bridge are lightweight walls of glass and aluminium. On the south side is a further screen outside the structure; this is made of movable louvres, each etched by silk screen techniques with the names of all the town's citizens. The louvres act as brise-soleil and become a poignant, delicate grey veil that protects the inner life of the building, and incidentally reminds the town's servants (in mirror writing) of the people for whom they are working. During office hours, the louvres are controlled by a computerized system to optimize between shading and transparency. At night and weekends, the blades are choreographed to change in blocks every half hour, so the whole facade forms a constantly changing backdrop to city life. The whole bridge is 97m long, so it cantilevers on both sides of the square, visually extending the urban space to embrace the whole width of the valley. As a composition, the town hall unites the elements of the original uncompleted square and the valley it sits in; it acts as a formal gateway to the fine park, and it makes a strong horizontal civic statement against the predominantly high-rise chaos of tourist towers and slabs that surround it. Benidorm is getting a heart back.

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