The Balarte Hotel is a residual space. Out on the edge of the tourist scene that has been institutionalised by big businesses, clubs and holiday villages, Balarte does not offer the guest a postcard panorama of the city. Balarte belongs to the travel experience itself, like the sights one sees in the city. It does not have historical standing of a monument, but rather echoes in amused and ironic remembrance the last avant-garde movement to which it belongs, and which we have wiped out. It is like a town square, temporarily occupied by buskers. It is a space embedded into the present by the spontaneous installations of, as yet, unknown artists.

Arch. Sergio Adamo