You can’t design what you won’t maintain

A marvel of design is about to collapse into the ocean, and we can’t do anything about it.

Auditorio de Tenerife via the official website

There’s a poem by Mayakovsky that I can’t get out of my head when I think about the Auditorio de Tenerife.

The poem is about a horse.

A workhorse slips on an icy street and falls. People immediately gather around. They laugh, shout, and mock it. The author is the only one who feels pity. He steps closer and notices tears running down its face:

I came closer and saw — A drop after drop trickling down the snout, hiding in the mane.

And then the author tells the horse not to cry, because each of us, in our own way, is a horse:

Sweetheart, we are all a little like horses; every one of us is a horse in their own way.

Santa Cruz de Tenerife is one of the most idyllic cities in the Canary Islands. At its heart stands the jewel — the Auditorio. It’s a place where talent from both worlds, New and Old, comes together. A theatre, opera, dance, and music heaven.

Now it’s on the verge of collapse. This horse has slipped and fallen.

Is this bad design? A failure of maintenance? The truth likely sits somewhere in between, rooted in a deeper issue — a misunderstanding of how the user experience of public spaces actually works.

When we were here the last time, 2 years ago, to see a Canadian ballet (first-row tickets for people under 30 were €5), cockroaches the size of sub-Saharan scorpions from Prince of Persia weren’t yet running under the seats. Now they do.

There were no loose tiles on the roof, and fewer cracks in the ceiling. Now there are plenty.

Now, the only thing that comes to mind when you stand in front of the Auditorio de Tenerife is: “Look how they massacred my boy.”

Cracked mosaic and water stains — photo by author

What was once one of the most beautiful buildings in Spain — yes, it’s even featured on postmarks —

• a jewel at the western edge of Europe,
• and, to me, a little “Sydney Opera of the Atlantic”

is now struggling, waiting for repairs. And it was only completed in 2003.

Water is seeping through the structure. Parts of the building are closed. In some places, literal tape is holding elements together. Meanwhile, the Sydney Opera House, built in the 1970s, still looks pristine.

What happened to this beautiful European public space? And why does there never seem to be a budget to maintain it?

User experience of complex systems

UX is any experience someone has with a system. And a building is one of the most complex systems to design. This particular building is a public space. Public spaces shouldn’t only be visually appealing — they must also be comfortable, accessible, safe, and multifunctional.

Right now, the Auditorio delivers a broken user experience:

1. There’s visible wear and damage
2. Paths are obstructed, making wheelchair access difficult
3. Parts of the space are simply inaccessible (to anyone)
4. Safety is questionable
5. The place is always dirty… and there are cockroaches

Addressing why that is from a point of view of user experience might just clear things out.

When you don’t design for reality

Things break, monuments decay (unless it’s Lenin — Lenins get demolished), buildings fade and crumble.

From the very beginning, the fate of Auditorio was uncertain. It had been planned since the 1990s with a budget of $30 million. In reality, construction dragged on for years, and costs rose to $72 million (tripled!).

The Auditorio serves far fewer people than its famous Australian counterpart , although being small didn’t save it from the faulty thinking that reality obeys whatever design assumes.

Designing for reality means accepting that a building is not a static object, but a living system, exposed to elements, time, people, and constraints.

In architecture research and practice, when a building is expensive to build and expensive to maintain, but serves relatively few people…

(The Sydney Opera House holds around 5,700 visitors. This little place seats only about 2,000)

…every repair becomes harder to justify. Over time, bureaucracy increases, and the project — however beautiful — becomes a burden on public bodies.

Temporary metal fence — photo by author

It’s not enough to design once and forever if you never return to it.

Designing for reality means designing for everything that happens after opening day, including the salty ocean air and storms, limits of public budgets, and the simple fact that things break over time.

In this sense, the Canarian Opera was doomed from the start. Amid the chaos of construction and ever-rising costs, there were simply no resources left for long-term maintenance of the system.

Usability has a lifecycle, and this lifecycle needs care

The ISO standard for human-centred design (ISO 9241-210) treats design as an ongoing process, and not a one-time deliverable. Systems must be evaluated, maintained, and improved over time based on real use.

Missing and ill-fitting tiles on the wall in 2015 via Wiki

That’s what never happened to Auditorio. Unfortunately, the government of the Canary Islands didn’t account for lifecycles— they were focused on building a landmark.

Debts, debts, more debts

In software, we call this technical debt. In experience design, it becomes UX debt.

UX debt includes any ongoing problems in the experience due to launching a fast, easy, or careless solution that negatively impacts users. When issues are ignored, postponed, or patched instead of solved, they accumulate.

The Auditorio isn’t just deteriorating, but it’s carrying years of unpaid user experience debt —from cleanliness to safety fixes. What we have now is a half-broken system that no longer works as intended.

Today, it needs at least €24 million just to be repaired.

Not so pretty when you come closer — photo by author

€24 million is not a small amount for the Canary Islands, whose government is notoriously slow to make decisions or take responsibility.

Theorize all you want — red tape doesn’t care

At one point, the government even considered suing the architect, hoping he would cover the cost of repairs himself.

Reports go back and forth for years, but responsibility is still unclear. A project for renovation was funded, but not shared publicly. Even now, there’s no clear answer to a basic question: Who is going to fix it?

Meanwhile, the building continues to decay. You can theorize all you want, but money is not going to appear when there is a global absence of ownership (and suspected corruption).

I’m struck by the lack of a straightforward answer to a basic question: who is actually responsible for maintaining and restoring public landmarks?

This is what the main sala looks like — photo by author

When responsibility is shared, it often becomes diluted. When it’s unclear, it becomes delayed. And when it’s contested, nothing happens at all.

Actually, there was never a plan

Service design aligns how an organization operates with what users actually experience. It teaches that every experience needs clear ownership. Someone is responsible for how the system performs over time.

The Auditorio isn’t just badly maintained. It was never designed as a service — only as an object. There was never a bridge between the “business idea” — build me a cool theater — and a plan for how it can be realistically maintained. There was never a plan at all.

Damage on the roof via eldiario

What we’re seeing in Tenerife is not just neglect. It’s a failure to treat maintenance as part of the original design process. Only point A was ever planned — not the long, difficult journey from A to B.

Europe should take an example from Ukraine

While EU membership isn’t helping Spain fix a single building, Ukrainians, with almost no funding, are saving ancient stone monuments from the frontlines.

These are the so-called “stone babas.” They are very creepy at night.

Stone babas via suspilne

I remember walking past them after school— faceless, watchful figures standing still in the dark winter afternoons. These Polovtsian stone figures date back to the 11th–13th centuries. Each one is unique. They were placed over individual graves, marking specific people and preserving their memory.

Evacuation process

Even under the pressure of war, people are finding ways to protect and move them.

The fate of Auditorio as of 2026

While the Auditorio is barely standing, the Cabildo (island government) has spent almost a year without providing updates. For now, unfortunately, things look like this:

• There is ongoing conflict over who should pay (the architect? construction companies? public funds?)
• The government refuses to share the renovation project with the opposition
• Deadlines have been repeatedly missed

There’s still no start date for the works and no clarity on the final cost or budget. Cabildo also promised a train in the Canary Islands 20 years ago. And it’s still just a “plan”.

It’s just really sad.

We like to celebrate design at its peak, when it’s brand new, photographed, maybe a prince or another VIP arrives to officially “open it”.

But the real test comes later — when surfaces crack and attention moves on. That’s when a project either proves it was designed for reality, or reveals that it was only ever meant to be seen, not sustained.

The Auditorio didn’t fail because it aged. It failed because no one designed what would happen when it did.