From Banking Halls to Gallery Walls: The Faro Santander Transformation
A decade-long architectural project in northern Spain has turned the former headquarters of Banco Santander into a public cultural landmark. The Pereda Building, a ten-storey structure dating back to 1795 on Santander’s waterfront, will reopen its doors as the Faro Santander museum on 8 September 2026. It marks the first completed work in Spain by Pritzker Prize-winning architect David Chipperfield and his firm.
The bank’s philanthropic foundation led the decision to repurpose the 10,000-square-metre office complex, aiming to give the public access to its extensive private art collection. For nearly a decade, Chipperfield’s team carefully preserved the building’s historic fabric while inserting a modern circulatory spine—visible through an arched façade—that visually links every floor and symbolises the shift from a closed financial institution to an open civic space.
Visitors will find five gallery levels alongside a café, restaurant, ground-floor auditorium, and a rooftop terrace. A standout new element is a sculptural concrete spiral staircase, paired with a contemporary steel pavilion on the roof that contrasts sharply with the neoclassical shell. The studio, known for adaptive reuse projects such as converting the former US embassy in London into a hotel, here continues its practice of injecting new public life into historic urban buildings.
What Chipperfield’s Design Brings to Santander’s Waterfront
Why Santander Turned a Headquarters into Art Space
The Faro Santander project is less a commercial venture and more a statement of corporate philanthropy. By moving its collection out of private vaults and into a purpose-designed museum, the Santander foundation reinforces a trend among large European financial institutions to open their accumulated cultural assets to the public. The choice of Santander itself—rather than Madrid or Barcelona—also signals an intent to help position the city and the Cantabria region as a cultural destination, drawing visitors beyond the traditional tourist trail.
Chipperfield’s Architectural Signature
Chipperfield’s design approach focuses on clarity and on making the dialogue between old and new explicit. The new central circulation route, framed by the large façade arch, doesn’t hide the building’s past but reinterprets it. This strategy is consistent with the practice’s earlier transformations, where historic structures are not erased but repurposed with a distinct contemporary layer. Here, the interplay between the robust concrete staircase, the lightweight steel rooftop pavilion, and the original 18th-century walls tells a clear story of regeneration—one that will likely influence similar projects in other waterfront cities with underused banking halls.
What It Means for Santander’s Urban Identity
The museum’s opening gives Santander a notable new public amenity on its seafront. Beyond the art, the café, auditorium, and roof terrace are designed to attract both locals and tourists as everyday social spaces. While the economic uplift is hard to quantify at this stage, the project reinforces ongoing efforts by the city to diversify from its historic reliance on the banking sector into cultural tourism. By making a formerly restricted building open to all, Faro Santander physically alters the urban fabric and offers a tangible example of how private corporate heritage can be converted into shared community assets.
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