This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A widely criticised restoration of an ancient Spanish castle has won a prestigious international architecture prize.

The five-year refurbishment of Matrera castle, a 1,000-year-old fortress near Cádiz, was the focus of a bitter clash between traditionalists and modernists.

Its dilapidated structure was shored up and returned to its original dimensions in a project many saw as a botched attempt to impose a modernist white cube on the original fabric.

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However, the project was shortlisted in the global Architizer A+ awards and on Tuesday it won the popular vote in the architecture and preservation category.

Carlos Quevedo, the architect who oversaw the project, expressed his delight at the prize. He will travel to New York next month to collect the award.

“We are very happy,” he told the Guardian. “I am proud of the work we’ve done and we want to celebrate. It is very important for us because it a recognition for all the work we have done over five years.”

Quevedo said he respected the opinions of those who criticised the project, but suggested they were upset by change.

“People have different aesthetic opinions,” he said. “We were sure of the work we did. The critics didn’t like the change to the monument … Many have been negative, but architects – not only from Spain, but internationally – have sent me messages saying the project is good.”

The Architizer A+ awards judges – who included the celebrated Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, and the Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly, who designed the Walkie Talkie skyscraper in London – gave the jury prize in the preservation category to the restoration of an apartment block in Los Angeles.

Local residents expressed their disgust when the Matrera castle restoration was first unveiled. One man told Spain’s La Sexta channel: “They’ve got builders in rather than restorers and, like we say round here, they’ve cocked it up.”

Elías García Martínez’s 19th-century fresco of Christ, post-restoration.

Hispania Nostra, which campaigns to preserve Spain’s cultural heritage, described the project as “truly lamentable”. “No words are needed, you just need to look at the photographs,” it said.

Others have compared it to the doomed and now-notorious attempt by a devout woman to restore Elías García Martínez’s 19th-century fresco of Christ in the north-eastern Spanish town of Borja.

Architecture experts, however, have pointed out that the restoration is in keeping with the recent trend for restoring ruins with blank additions.

Last month Quevedo said the restoration had been guided by three aims: “To structurally consolidate those elements that were at risk; to differentiate new additions from the original structure – thus avoiding the imitative reconstructions that are prohibited by law; and to recover the volume, texture and tonality that the tower would originally have had.”