History of a competition
The case of Le Corbusier and the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow
Pedro Ponce Gregorio, Ignacio Peris Blat, Salvador José Sanchis Gisbert
Pp. 2-19
The Urban Dimension of the Monument in Aldo Rossi
The text studies the presence of the monumentality in the city construction in
the work of Aldo Rossi, which begins with his visit to Moscow in 1951 and has a continuity in his reading of the work of
Adolf Loos. The hypothesis proposed by the study, is to demonstrate that this comprehension of monumental architecture in
Rossi, that we find in the Loos projects for Vienna between 1909 and 1912, helps us to understand a view of the city that
these authors share and whose construction they define from another kind of monumentality.
Images from a Postcard by Adolf Loos
Manuel Ferrer Sala
Pp. 20-37
Rome 1935
Architecture, City, Rhetoric and Propaganda in the International Congress of Architectss
José Ramón Alonso Pereira
Pp. 38-55
Aldo van Eyck in The Hague
Spatial reinterpretation of the Catholic Church: Light and duality
José Fernández-Llebrez Muñoz
Pp. 56-71
White palaces over rice crops
During the Cold War, the Kingdom of Thailand aligned with the United States of America in its fight
against the international spread of communism. The rapid industrialisation of the country, where the development of a modern banking system played
a vital role, was led by dictator Sarit Thanarat. An extensive network of bank branches and office buildings spread to every corner of the country.
It is analysed how the confluence between the demands of modern office buildings and the local aspirations of representation gave rise in Thailand
to a singular architectural style that drew from the abstraction of vernacular motifs, in line with international trends such as the American New
Formalism and, particularly, the works of Minoru Yamasaki.
New formalism in Thai corporate architecture
Francisco García Moro
Pp. 72-87
Ornament and nature
From Goethe’s house to the Secession Pavilion
Isabel María de Cárdenas Maestre
Pp. 88-105
Delayed objectives
Rewriting modern architecture since 1900
Macarena De la Vega de León
Pp. 106-119
From urban semiology to symbology in the consumerist city
Rafael Serrano Sáseta
Pp. 120-135
Civil guard barracks designed by women architects
A review of their contributions over the last fifty years
Daniel Pinzón-Ayalaa
Pp. 136-147
Competition-Exhibition of Spanish Popular Architecture (1933): “Casa Pinariega” and influence in projects by Alejandro Herrero Ayllón
Silvana Rodrigues de Oliveira
Pp. 148-165
A bench, an arrow, some words
The interventions of Pawson, Siza and Souto de Moura in the Abbey of Thoronet
Nieves Fernández Villalobos
Págs. 2-17
Roofs, volumetric composition and proportions in Madinat al-Zahra
Federico Iborra Bernad
One of the most striking aspects in the restorations of Caliphal palaces of
Madinat al-Zahra’ or al-Rummaniyya almunia is the configuration of the roofs, resolved individually on
four slopes over each of the rooms of buildings. This proposal, widely disseminated in popular publications
which need to define a image, comes from dubious premises and has not a clear justification in a functional
sense. On the other hand, Caliphal architecture is characterized by the recurrent use of square rooms,
perfectly delimited by heavy load-bearing walls, both in the main body and in the porticoes. In later times,
these dividing elements will gradually lose importance, turning into simple plaster arches in the rear and
disappearing into the front. In this text we ask ourselves some questions about its origin and function,
both compositional and structural, establishing a possible relationship between the planimetric solution
and the roofs of the building.Federico Iborra Bernad
Págs. 18-33
Unique architecture and public space
Inflections in the Italian medieval square
Ángel Camacho Pina
Págs. 34-53
Valdivia, an impregnable fortress
Roberto Montandon and the development of heritage awareness in Chile
Soledad Valdivia Ávila, Fernando Vela Cossío
Págs. 54-71
Her Dream Home
In the United States, with the end of World War II, a
cultural and territorial model based on the suburban lifestyle took root. Women had taken an active role
during the conflict, but postwar American society returned them to the background, restricting them to the
care of family and home. The domestic space became again a distinctly female ecosystem. From a gender perspective
this article explores how the discourse on housewives and domesticity was expressed in the specialized
press, particularly in advertisements published in Arts & Architecture. It tries to show how advertising
contributed to the association drawn between women and the domestic sphere, and in particular to the idea
of the kitchen as an inherently feminine space. Women were mostly assigned an ornamental role as passive
consumers, but occasionally they were portrayed as experts capable of instructing architects on how to
design the home.Domesticity and Gender in Advertising in Arts & Architecture
Daniel Díez Martínez
Págs. 72-89
Around function and back to form
During the 1950s, in his search for alternatives to the open plan,
Kahn laid the foundations for a real spatial (counter)revolution, founded on the recognition of the room as a
primary architectural entity. After the theoretical projects for the Adler and DeVore Houses, the Trenton Bath
House was materialized as an illustrating example of the emancipation process of the architectural form proposed
by Kahn in those years, based on a conscious experimentation with geometrical patterns. This article addresses
this issue from two intertwined perspectives. On the one hand, it takes the concept of emancipation as
synonymous with the physical, perceptual and symbolic autonomy of the room, based on a renewed allegiance
between enclosure and structure. On the other hand, it understands emancipation as synonymous with independence
between space and function, a lesson that Kahn drew from the past and that he was able to reshape and adapt
to the present, in a key moment of his career strongly influenced by
Anne Tyng.
A critical inquiry into the Trenton Bath House
Guiomar Martín Domínguez
Págs. 90-103
Architecture and oblivion
This paper presents the case of one of Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s works:
the Jockey Club of Goiás, located in the interior of Brazil. The object is little explored in publications,
lacking a deeper understanding for its material and immaterial values. The approach focuses on the building’s
trajectory, contextualizing its design and construction, with a look at the appropriation of space, from the
heyday to the decadence of this urban social and sporting equipment, with a view to its conservation and urban
reintegration. The aim is to demonstrate its cultural significance, whether through urban scale strategic
location, tectonic quality and environmental value. These attributes justify and enable its insertion in the
21s century city with the absorption of new uses related to its original vocation. The discussion opens the
way for conservation practices of modern buildings in Brazil, beyond
restoration.The Jockey Club of Goiás by Paulo Mendes da Rocha
Eline Maria Mora Pereira Caixeta, Christine Ramos Mahler
Págs. 104-119
Projects for a landscape of memory
The competition for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, started in 1957,
represents a milestone in the reflection on the meaning of an architectural landscape of memory in the second half
of the 20th century. The projects that were presented in the different phases of the contest, which lasted ten
years until 1967, contain not only a strong formal charge but also an important conceptual search to symbolically
reflect and synthesize, through architectural and landscape elements, the footprint of all the horror that had
been lived in the Polish Death Camp. Among all of them stands out the project “The Road”, developed by the team
led by the architect Oskar Hansen, a proposal that, if it had been carried out, would have marked a new meaning
in the architectural landscape project in its relationship with avant-garde plastic movements. However, the
end result of the competition was the construction of a mere commemorative monument of little character, thus
missing a great opportunity in the research and development of contemporary architectural
landscapes. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Competition
Darío Álvarez Álvarez
Págs. 120-135
The essayistic value of the interview in architecture
Antonio Cantero Vinuesa
The place of oral history within the historiography of modern
architecture is still not sufficiently understood and, therefore, its possible use has been diminished since
the explosion in the 1960s of publications that illustrated the modern architectural canon of “the medium is the
message”. Seeing the oral transmission of interviews as a documentary medium of spoken memory expands the field of
available theoretical production. The proposal explores a crucial but largely overlooked question: the role of
the interview in architectural practice —not interviews of architects but interviews by architects—. If the interview
involves training on orality as a projectual practice, the purpose is to deal with the essayistic value of a
little conceptualised architectural interview as an intellectual instrument as opposed to other habitual practices;
and with this, to open up the discourse to a fertile place of progress in the study of the
discipline.Antonio Cantero Vinuesa
Págs. 136-149
Architecture and Environment
The historiographic and critical tradition of architecture has been sustained by concepts— styles, authors, societies,
cultures, modes of production—taken for the most part from the formalistic approaches pertaining to the History
of Art. These are concepts that have given rise to elaborate ‘top-down’ stories where more infrastructural
issues—such as the environment, material resources, comfort, and bodily experience—have not had a place.
Nevertheless, there is a bibliographic tradition—of short lineage, yet rich and original— that has tackled
architecture’s relationship with the broad and complex semantic field now encompassed in the word ‘environment’;
a tradition defined as much by the environmental paradigms of 20th-century architecture—hygienist,
technocratic, bioclimatic, ecological, thermodynamic, and sustainable paradigms—as by the aesthetic
and philosophical paradigms of other disciplines—structuralist, anthropological, phenomenological, atmospheric,
anthropotechnical, and ‘deep’ ecological paradigms. Today this bibliographic baggage tends to be enriched and
expanded by means of the analytical, hermeneutical, and critical tools of history, in pursuit of a new and
necessary ‘environmental history
of architecture’.
A Critical Bibliography
Eduardo Prieto González
Págs. 150-167
Literary train, literal train
U.S. literature, during the 19th century, sometimes employed the
train as a symbol that expressed an invasion: the industrial taking over the rural. The railroad exemplified a rapidly
changing world penetrating into a quiet, bucolic one. However, this contrasts with another contemporary meaning
of the railroad derived from the country’s expansion to the west: the train as the machine that allowed contact
with new landscapes of great aesthetic value. This resulted in the coexistence of dissociated realities very
common in the country during that time: the train simultaneously symbolizing the deprivation and the connection
with the American landscape. Olmsted diverted the railroad from this confrontation. Contrary to his predecessors,
he recognized the benefits of the modern world. His landscape career was, in fact, an attempt to ameliorate
its more harmful consequences. With this in mind, the train entered his discourse both in it’s literally and
literal forms. First, as a narrative device present in most of his travel books. Second, as an element to be
taking into account when designing suburbs. Here, he would find interesting spatial solutions when combining
the railroad with his residential enclaves. Lastly, the sum of both gave a new figurative meaning to the train,
which is, in fact, one of the more innovative contribution of this paper. From various unpublished manuscript,
I contend that in Olmsted’s imaginary the railroad was displaced from a qualitative discussion of landscape
to a perceptive one.Frederick Law Olmsted on railroads
Nicolás Mariné
Págs. 168-181
The regeneration of abandoned infrastructures in the Contemporary City
The accelerated physical development of urban infrastructures
during the Industrial Revolution and their evolution have produced some of these spaces are being found today
abandoned in the inside of the cities. The experiences of the revitalisation of the Parc de la Villette in
Paris and the regeneration of the High Line of New York relate to each other by seeking to enhance the existing
heritage elements that build the place, and which together with its endemic vegetation and historical richness,
drive its progress. These two cases contextualise the 2010 opening of the Tempelhofer Feld airfield in Berlin to
the public. The study of the emblematic history of this great green infrastructure and the urban development
around it are the keys guiding this research, combined at all times with the sustainable needs of the
contemporary city. The airport building, designed by Ernst Sagebiel as a monumental multifunctional infrastructure
with the potential to become an international landmark, places the Tempelhof landscape as a new
industrial heritage challenge for the 21st century.Projecting the future of the Berlin Tempelhof Airport
Alonso Sanz Merlo
Págs. 182-193
Doctrine, mythes and facades
The totalitarian promotion of mass sports arenas in Italy, Germany and Spain in the first half of the twentieth century
Antonio J. Cidoncha Pérez, María del Pilar Salazar Lozano
Págs. 2-15
Airfields
This is an article in two stages, mediated by an intermission,
where nature, city and aviation intersect. The first one, focussed in the late twenties of the last century,
describes a moment of emotion in which the first airfields will serve geographers, artists and architects as platforms
from which to explore the relationship between city and nature. The second places us today and throws questions
into the future. A moment in which the sequential, evolutionary landscapes mark the trend in the treatment of
obsolete airport facilities, reversing much of their land to the original field and blurring the traces of their
aerial stage. The experience of Robert Smithson in Pine Barrens defines the intermission, underlining the artist’s
sensitivity in appreciating the emptiness of the airfield as a unique place, loaded with sensory and heritage
values.A new role for the old airports
Ramón A. Pico Valimaña
Págs. 16-27
Vincenzo Scamozzi
Pioneer of Environmental Design
Eduardo Prieto
Págs. 28-49
Ceramics and architecture
Palais de la Céramique de Sèvres, de la Verrerie et de la Monnaie at L´Exposition Internationale de Paris, 1937
María Pura Moreno Moreno
Págs. 50-69
September 1931
In early september 1931, on a private letter dispatched by B. Breslow
-acting as Comercial Representative of the URSS in France-, Le Corbusier (and Pierre) received the invitation to
participate in the contest of the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow. A building that would not only enbodies russian´s
working class will, but also should become in the same way, there where the Salvador cathedral was built, in the artistic-architectural
monument of the struggling soviet capital. So, using the project as an instrument, the note will try to put in relation
two of the most intimate materials in the life and work of Le Corbusier: his Moscow diaries and the atelier correspondence.
All of this, with the sole purpose of revealing some of the most unknown keys to the architect behavior; not at the front of
this specific project, but above all that surrounded it: whether the clients, their assistants or Pierre.
Le Corbusier and the Palace of the Soviets
Pedro Ponce Gregorio, Ignacio Peris Blat, Salvador José Sanchis Gisbert
Págs. 70-85
Von Ledoux bis Johnson, and beyond
As yet another mind caught up in the mass ideologically filtered intellectual
migration caused by the triumph of fascisms in Europe and the consequent World War, Kaufmann’s transcendence in his American
destination would follow a surprising double path. The forced connections between authors, attitudes and intellectual
positions from very different points in the history of Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier, coming from a context of opposition
to Nazism, would encounter, in the absence of a translation with which to correct misinterpretations, a deformed but
highly influential continuity. This would be done through a Philip Johnson, precisely a former Nazi, and his houses.
Inside the first of these, Kaufmann would give his first lecture in the United States. The second, very famous, would be
conceived by Johnson based on a free interpretation of Kaufmann’s concepts, adapted to a very different context.
His long-lasting influence would lay the foundations for an early postmodernism and even for his later drift towards
star-architecture. Meanwhile, and conversely, Kaufmann’s research on American territory would withdraw towards
the Age of Enlightenment.
The American transcendence of Emil Kaufmann
Jorge Minguet Medina
Págs. 86-97
Rationalism without avant-garde?
At the Paseo de la Concha, in San Sebastian, stands a housing block designed by
Pedro Muguruza before the civil war started and built after the end of the conflict. It is a simple construction but is not
exempted from interest, not only because of its architectonic value, listed in different publications of local architectural heritage,
but also to be one of the first substitutions that took place in the small palaces conforming the city waterfront at the beginning of
the XXth century. However, what make the review of this property more interesting, beyond these aspects, are the personality of
the architect and the specific dates when it was designed and built. These circumstances are used to develop a short critic
thought about the cause of modern architecture -and architecture in general- in these turbulent moments in Spain, taking into account
the formidable barrier that the civil war represents and the leading role that its architect was going to perform in the spanish
architecture along the first years of Franco regime.Pedro Muguruza at the Paseo de La Concha in San Sebastian
Mariano González Presencio, Juan Bautista Echeverría Trueba
Págs. 98-111
Landscape appropriations
Alison and Peter Smithson developed a topographical thinking of their own which consists of a particular ability
to define the settlement of their buildings by shaping the surface and section of the terrain. Consolidated over time, this operational
instinct would form a substantial part of their personal way of appreciating the physical context of their origin: an inclusive look through
which the Smithsons assimilated the essence of the most representative artificial manipulations of the local territory. Among these numerous
appropriation processes, the one carried out on one of the most decisive topographical devices produced by English Landscape in the eighteenth
century stands out: the ha-ha. This ingenious manipulation of the ground plane would also allow them to fully connect with “the English”,
through a deliberated rooting in native landscape and the techniques of the Picturesque, which underpin much of their
grounding strategies.
Topographical devices in the work of Alison and Peter Smithson
David Casino Rubio
Págs. 112-127
SuperGrand’s
This article, based on an analysis of the refurbishing of Grand’s Restaurant (Philadelphia, 1962),
designed by Robert Venturi and William Short, aims to show the importance of integrating systems of typography into architectural design.
Choosing this case study enables the impact of typography on Venturi’s early period (1962-1969) to be examined. The theme involves content
and aspects which have remained virtually unexplored to date despite the many studies devoted to Venturi’s architecture and those written by
the architect himself. Despite its modest size and budget, Grand’s not only exemplarily condensed theoretical aspects of Venturi’s own
investigation but also served as a precursor for other interdisciplinary trends of the time such as Supergraphics. Writing in Grand’s is a ‹fully-fledged›
architectural element affecting the design’s interpretation, its symbolic nature and its understanding as part of an architectural order
and composition.Typography as an element integrated into the early work of Robert Venturi, 1962-1969
Inmaculada Esteban Maluenda, Enrique Encabo Seguí
Págs. 128-143
Il problema dell’alloggio
It remains to some extent unknown the theoretical approach taken by Adalberto Libera while he was Director of the INA-Casa programme’s technical
office (1949-1951). This Italian social housing programme promoted the construction of more than 350,000 homes between 1949 and 1963, highly
influenced by the norms set by Libera’s department at a key moment for the assimilation of modern housing types in Italy. It is even less well
known the extensive theoretical work on housing developed by Libera while he was retired in Trento during the war, which became essential to be
appointed as Director of the INA-Casa’s technical office. Libera designed types and groupings of housing according to not only spatial but
also socio-economic conditions of the prospective owners. In this sense, Libera’s work was not only graphic: he also deeply reflected on the
problem of dwelling and on the inhabitant. This article delves into these housing studies in order to reveal how they influenced the character
of the architecture promoted by the INA-Casa programme —i.e., the construction of its architectural discourse. To do so, it relies on the
still unpublished material that makes up his study (texts, charts, perspectives and sketches), as well as on the two manuals published by
the INA-Casa programme to regulate the design principles of its architecture. The aim is, therefore, twofold: to shed light on an unknown
moment of the author’s work and to discuss its historical significance as a key piece of Italy’s largest post-war social
housing plan. Adalberto Libera’s contribution to modern housing in Italy during the 1940s
David Escudero
Págs. 144-159
José Antonio Corrales
I met José Antonio Corrales in late 2009. During the last year of his life, I visited him every week. I could see his projects
pass in front of my eyes. Also the unpublished or discarded ones that allow us, with the passage of time, to widen the focus of the gaze,
discovering new frames in its way of projecting. Between 1955 and 1957 Corrales projected and built three houses alone in Madrid. Two little
known and documented. The third unpublished. In 1968 he plans a small house for his family on the outskirts of Madrid, called La Viña. In just
eleven years, Corrales’ architecture evolves towards a dissolution of the limits that a transformed relationship with the environment entails.
The first three houses are presented as net pieces, with marked, slender and transparent limits. In La Viña, the open and changing limit
becomes the heart of the house, thus reflecting its new way of participating of
the place.
The dissolution of the limit
Nicolás Martín Domínguez
Págs. 160-175
Transition, transformation and latency
In Maputo (Mozambique), a large number of collective housing programs were developed during
the second half of the twentieth century following the principles of the Modern Movement. This architectural production represents a significant
part of the city’s current backbone where the Torres Vermelhas complex stands out as a paradigmatic case, as its construction was interrupted
by the events that led to the country’s independence in 1975. A political change that was accompanied by a complex process of cultural and
functional resignification. Within this framework, this article seeks to explore the architectural life of these buildings in their different
temporalities by studying the potential of their adaptation and transformation mechanisms. The aim, thus, is to participate in the
construction of an alternative to the Eurocentric canon through a disciplinary project methodology that considers the processes of identity
and social re-appropriation as fundamental to the critical evaluation of this legacy as
cultural heritage.
The consecutive lives of the “Torres Vermelhas” complex
Patricia Noormahomed
Págs. 176-193
The transatlantic overview of Antonio Bonet Castellana
Much has been written and published recently about Antonio Bonet Castellana and his preference
for the modulation of the constructive systems in the 50s. However, none of these publications has achieved to reveal accurately the cultural
and intellectual context which nourished Sr Antonio´s search. The aim of this publication is to show which events occurred during his first
travel to Europe, right after his experiences in Latin America, more precisely in Argentina and Uruguay; events such as the reencounter with
his mentors, specially J.L. Sert and Le Corbusier, in the CIAM VII hold in Bergamo, in July 1949. As simple as it may seem it has not been
analyzed thoroughly up to date and it brightens not only the biography of Bonet himself but also helps understand the Argentine constructions
in the middle of the twentieth century.
CIAM and the constructive lyricism for Buenos Aires in the 50s
Andrés Tabera Roldán
Págs. 194-213
‘Light Architecture’ and modernism.
The ‘lichtarchitektur’ phenomenon in German and Spanish modern architecture during the inter-war period.
Rodrigo Almonacid Canseco
Págs. 1-16
Homothermal Spaces.
Brought on by the Industrial Revolution, the breakthrough of centralized heating in its different versions (air, steam, or water) gave rise to a genuine revolution in architecture: the passage from heterothermia (space organized in a gradient around a single thermal focus) to homothermia (the isotropic space served by split thermal foci). This article discusses that revolution through three complementary analyses: of the origins of centralized heating systems; of the technical, social, and symbolic crises produced by the implantation of those systems in 19th-century spaces; and of the strategies that architects of the period used to accommodate the new machinery.A History of Central Heating in 19th-Century Architecture
Eduardo Prieto
Págs. 17-28
El papel de lo vernáculo en la arquitectura moderna
Cuestiones de forma, identidad y adecuación al contexto
Alejandro García Hermida
Págs. 29-42
Modern to Contemporary
A Historiography of the Global in Architecture
Macarena de la Vega de León
Págs. 43-52
Succeeding Olmsted
In current times, several landscape theorists have noted a persistent crisis in the professional identity of landscape architecture. This problem has a long history, in fact, that can be traced back to when Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the creators of New York’s Central Park, conceived the profession. Following some of the ideas that recent publications have hinted at, in this paper we look into the difficulties that the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the first official organization of its kind, went through during the early attempts to define landscape architecture as a modern profession.
To do this, we have consulted the original documents that the ASLA produced between its foundation and the middle of the 20th century. These are currently stored in the Library of Congress of the United States and some of them have remained unpublished up until now. A critical reading of these records highlights the conflicts and complications in defining the field of landscape architecture and building a specific public profile, as well as in rooting the profession in history. In the paper, we also show how these questions were related to some of Olmsted’s ideas and the way that his son and namesake, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., tried to carry them into the 20th century.
The American Society of Landscape Architects and the Difficulties to Define Modern Landscape Architecture.
Nicolás Mariné
Págs. 53-70
Object of contradiction
This text aims to analyse a specific aspect of the idea of “convention” in the work of Robert Venturi: the inclusion of the everyday object into architecture, in the context of Pop culture, which would seem to re-establish the dialectics of the Duchampian ready-made, albeit transformed. A dual analysis exercise is undertaken. The proposed approach points at, firstly, those interventions by means of objects that may be understood as pertaining to the ready-made, together with a study of possible variants of use of said objects as a resource. In the second instance, different cases are studied in which the item ceases to be distinguishable element within the work, to become a full-blown formal motive on its own: ready-made architecture. This methodology led to the study, as analysed in the last section, of obvious conceptual paradoxes.Approaches to the ready-made in the early works of Robert Venturi, 1959-1968
Enrique Encabo Seguí e Inmaculada Esteban Maluenda
Págs. 71-88
Landscape architectures in Norway
During the 1990s the Norwegian government developed the National Tourist Routes Plan, focusing on upgrading 18 local road routes. The interesting program involved thoroughfares designated for road vehicles, bringing about the recovery of the epic sense of car road trips, access to remote spots, and sustainable enhancement of their value. Many of the projects were carried out by young Norwegian architectural and landscaping teams trained at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) under the influence of Knut Knutsen, Christian Norberg Schulz, and Svere Fehn.The influence of AHO masters on the National Tourist Routes of Norway
Iván I. Rincón Borrego
Págs. 89-100
Modern architects and contractors in Mexico
It is known that during the first decade of the twentieth century in Mexico was built a large number of buildings, both public and private, which meant the dissemination of modern building materials and techniques. Many of them were the results from new construction management processes, since their implementation implied the importation of complex and large structures which included different materials. More than about their technical-constructive aspects, this article seeks to emphasize the incorporation of the management mechanisms that these implied.
The projects of the architects Theodore De Lemos and August Cordes, built by Mexican engineer Gonzalo Garita, with Edward and Foster Milliken's steel structures company, also based in New York, were the result of the development of a market in which appeared the first entrepreneurs of modern construction in the country. The work focuses on the realization in Mexico City of the buildings for Casa Boker and for the Mutual Insurance Company of New York, in the context of the works of the designers and contractors in Manhattan, Cape Town or Johannesburg. In this way we understand a modern management of projects and works in advance of our day’s globalization.
International links between De Lemos & Cordes and Milliken
Brothers, 1898-1910
Mónica Silva Contreras
Págs. 101-118
Towards Arts & Architecture
The editorial revolution of John Entenza (1938-1945)
Daniel Díez Martínez
Pp. 1-14
The box without qualities, the cacophonous city
In the course of the last decade of the nineteenth-century and the early decades of the latter, and going beyond its specific values, visual and literary cultures put forward what would entail the loss of the signifier for a meaningless architecture without qualities. Since then, architectures that proclaimed its building envelope as an effective mechanism of meaning, and not exclusively its form, have proliferated. An oddity that initially led to considerable difficulties in order to allow architecture to continue expressing its contents, compelled to redefine the very notion of meaning. Given its diminishing communicative feasibility and its fall into a simple medium, “texts” were tasked to negotiate with media significance techniques in the search for maximum persuasion and prompt information within the city complex framework. A modern interpretation of architecture as machine ended up turning to cacophonous the big city longed-for symphony.
The idea of meaning redefined within contemporary architectural building envelope
Ricardo Sánchez Lampreave
Pp. 15-26
Fifty cans
Pop Repetition in the work of Andy Warhol and Robert Venturi
Enrique Encabo Seguí & Inmaculada Esteban Maluenda
Pp. 27-42
Temple, Machine, Caravan
Theater and the city in 20th century Italy
Fernando Quesada
Pp. 43-56
The soliloquy of Hassan Fathy
The “alternative” architectural condition points to individualistic processes that give results far removed from the conventionalisms of context. The internationalization of the modern postulates led the critique to leave constructive procedures in the analyses of revitalization of an architecture considered as excessively identitarian, to one side. This article analyses the effort of the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy (1900-1989) to defend at all levels, during a period coinciding with Western modernity, the wisdom of traditional inherited edification. The scarcity of iron and cement in Egypt, after the Second World War, boosted the recovery of a low-cost construction adapted to the climatic conditions and the material resources available locally. Popular architecture’s durability, especially its utilitarian aspect, preserved since ancient times and, in particular, its effectiveness in climate control, inspired in Fathy the desire to learn traditional constructive and spatial devices. The questioning of the figure of the “Muallim”, or Master Mason, which had become a source of inherited knowledge, with regards vernacular constructive systems, added to his own analysis of popular architecture, gave him a knowledge of autochthonous materials and passive mechanisms of environmental control that were reinterpreted with a modern reading in the materialization of both his domestic and urban projects.
The vernacular from a modern perspective
María Pura Moreno Moreno
Pp. 57-68
Notes about the palais
It would be on July of 1926, after the competition called by the Edmond de Polignac Princess´s Foundation, when Le Corbusier obtained the commission to build what it would become his first palais, the Palais du Peuple on Paris. A project that, located on a neglected and irregular plot left behind by the set of shapes already built for the main building, had to serve as an extension to the important part of dormitory that l´Armee du Salut had already established as a refugee for the homeless. This is where the present “notes” follow in: on the continuous transformation that took place on the project inside the number 35 on the Rue de Sevres, with the objective of dusting off some of the key aspects of that first creative track blurred by history; going back along the line of the Palace for the People of Paris.
Pedro Ponce Gregorio
Pp. 69-84
Biuer... Chicago!
Under its casual and colorful appearance, the McCormick Tribune Campus Center built in 2003 at the Chicago IIT campus by Rem Koolhaas constitutes a perplexing -hard to grasp conceptually- architectural piece. The commission origin was an international competition whose bases demanded a building “equal in stature to Mies van der Rohe’s S. R. Crown Hall” that “will express the architecture of our time”. According to Koolhaas, the building, in which he subverts all kind of disciplinary categories that shape Mies’s work, is a built response to the condition of our time described in Junkspace, a text written in parallel to its construction proccess. The article argues that a surreal halo shines under its pop aesthetic. Being its significance reinforced by Koolhaas’ clear appreciation of the findings of the Surrealists -among whom, especially, Dalí’s paranoid-critical method-, it may constitute a clue of deeper arguments that, steeping the strategy and methodology of the project, contribute to articulate the construct with which its author gives response to the competition intellectual demands.
A surrealistic argument for the McCormick Tribune Campus Center.
Daniel Gómez-Valcárcel Gómez
Pp. 85-96
Laminar ceilings?
This contribution explores the constructive and formal potential of the laminar structures in the work of three prominent figures of Modern Architecture. Unlike the most memorable constructions of this type, the roof structures here considered are not the main and only protagonist element of the building. Conversely in these cases they have been designed as parts of the building more inconspicuous and integrated. The study excludes therefore the most important realizations and also more known, made by authors as Maillart, Candela, Isler, Torroja, Saarinen, Niemeyer, etc. which have been widely treated in the specialized literature. The paper is focused in architects as Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto and Louis Kahn, for whom the study of their approach to the laminar seems not to have been made adequately as a whole till now. Are important too, the considerations resulting from the comparative analysis, shedding some light on the idiosyncratic way in which this type of structures was adopted by each architect.
Shell construction in the work of some masters of modern architecture
Rafael García García
Pp. 97-108
Martini-Made. Ferrater-Fisac
In 1959 Miguel Fisac was engaged to project and construct a new industrial building: the pharmaceutical laboratories “Made”. One year earlier, Jaime Ferrater Ramoneda, a young Catalan architect settled in Madrid, completed in the same city a project for a new liquors manufacture building “Martini and Rossi”. While Fisac reached the zenith of his professional career, Ferrater on the other hand, was at his beginnings with this project. Apparently without any connections between the two creators, both chose a similar approach to resolve the constructive needs requested by their clients, by providing a new, sincere and pragmatic vision. The article contains 10 comparative points, which aim to prove the conceptual similarities of these two magnificent examples of industrial architecture in Madrid.
. Under the same idea
Mª José Bruno Aniorte
Pp. 109-120
From the Vitruvian basilica to the Enlightenment basilica
The basilical church model has been present in Christianity since the time of Constantine. Among its various variants and interpretations could be highlighted that developed in the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, characterized by lintel entablatures that support half-barrel vaults and which, ultimately, refers to a misreading of the vitruvian description of the Basilica of Fano. This important episode will be the renovating germ of neoclassical architecture, although the buildings we are about to treat are often obscured by the shadow of the paradigmatic church of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris which, however, abandons the original typology. In this text we propose a revision of the architecture of this time looking for a common thread connecting its main works, which try to explain themselves from not only historical or formal approaches, but also constructive ones.
Federico Iborra Bernad
Pp. 121-138
The dialoge between the old and the new
The church of the old school of Saint Hermegildo in Seville is a paradigm of our heritage in its authenticity. The temple is the last vestige of the old school, at that time barracks, which was demolished in 1957-58, leaving it exempt and in need of the restitution of an adequate image, compulsory from a patrimonial and urban perspective. Félix Hernández Giménez carried out its restoration in 1960-67, designing new shapes and elements for the building such as the front of the south facade, which was wrongly attributed to Alonso de Vandelvira, as is proved in this article. The analysis of nine located projects of Hernández and the auxiliary architect Rafael Manzano Martos and the information obtained from other sources verify this intervention without subtracting value from the building. Its formal modifications, the proper location of the building in its emplacement, as well as all the historical events that happened there are part of the building and its authenticity. The restoration of the church in the quarters of San Hermenegildo de Sevilla
Mª Gracia Gómez de Terreros Guardiola
Pp. 139-150
Arcadias under glass
Thermodynamic types: from hothouses to solar houses
Eduardo Prieto
Págs. 1-18
The shape of the contemporary glasshouse and the incidence of sunlight
The incidence of sunlight is one of the most important aspects in the design of a
glasshouse, due to its function of recreating a climate different from that of the latitude
in which it is located. However, although it may seem that this is the determining
factor in the formal configuration of a glasshouse, there are many other
parameters to be considered. This article analyzes three landmark glasshouses
after World War II, and observes the aspects that, in each case, have predominated
over what would be the ideal shape with regard to the incidence of sunlight. In
the first glasshouse, the question will focus on the imposition of a specific structural
form and system, in the second one, on the dynamic composition of the
whole, and in the third case, on the integration of the glasshouse in its location.
The three glasshouses have in common the compromise that their solution presents
between one and other parameters.Analysis of three cases: Climatron, Graz and Madrid
María Sanz Sánchez
Págs. 19-33
Constructions in Jerusalem
Continuity in building, city and territory
Marilda Azulay Tapiero
Págs. 34-53
The Influence of Southern Chile’s German Colonisation on Traditional Housing Architecture - from Valdivia to Puerto Montt
Jocelyn Tillería & Fernando Vela Cossío
Págs. 54-72
The architect as educator of the society
The competition for the monument to Frederick iI was first convened on 25
January 1787, at a time marked by the deep crisis that at all levels suffered the
Holy Roman Empire. The need to reverse the bad situation made that an important
part of the German intelligentsia pointed to education as the only possible
way of regeneration. In this sense, a number of sculptorical proposals related the
monarch to the figure of the philosopher. On the other hand, the projects presented
by Hans Christian Genelli, Carl Gotthard Langhans, Heinrich Gentz and
Friedrich Gilly, employed different strategies ussing architecture as a means to
produce an improvement in life of man. They were from the mere aesthetic embellishment
posed by Langhans, passing by the abstraction capacity of the beauty
claimed by Gentz, to the building educational program designed by Gilly who, with
his proposal for the monument, conceived a mechanism capable of transforming
the ruler into a philosopher.The Frederic II monument between the years 1787 and 1797
María Montoro Rodríguez
Págs. 73-91
The Swiss Pavilion and the Spanish College in Paris
The Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris was born in a Europe that, after the
War of 1914-1918, reformulated its university models. Its buildings present an
extensive architectural register that goes from National styles to Modernism, making
the Cité a reflection of the plurality of 20th architecture. The Swiss Pavilion
and the Spanish College reflect that plurality. If the Pavilion is an emblem of
Modernism and Corbusean architecture, the College symbolizes the commitments
still in force with Academicism. The coincoincidencecidence of the program and
the parallelism of the place allow us to confront and to analyze them comparatively.
Based on documents deposited in the Cité Universitaire, the Swiss Pavilion,
the Spanish College and other archives, this paper intends to explain and analyze
its architectures, opposing their works in order to better understand them and to
understand an historical time that debates in all Europe between Tradition and
Avant-garde.A comparative analysis
José Ramón Alonso Pereira
Págs. 92-109
Jørn Utzon
This article analyzes the project of the Danish architect Jørn Utzon (1918-2008)
for the construction of the Union School of Danish Workers in Højstrup, Helsingør
(1958-1962), from the two proposals submitted to the competition, which obtain
the First and Second Prize, to the versions of the project that simultaneously develops
during the Sydney Opera House project (1956-1973). The analysis of the evolution
of the Højstrup project allows to analyze the plastic talent and the universe
of extraordinary lyricism of the architect, through the formal exploration that
develops around the platforms and the enclosures, to the relation between the two
elements of the typological scale, the tower and the lower block, the study of the
mechanisms of access through the porte-cochère, the aggregation system of the
patio houses or the role played by the structure in the project, in an exercise of
architectural exploration flowing from the competitions proposals, understood as
laboratories of formal experiences, to the slow and gradual development of the successive
projects taking care of both the site and the typological piece, in a careful
plastic innovation that claims the constructive experimentation and the integration
in the landscape.Platforms and recints in Højstrup
Jaime J. Ferrer Forés
Págs. 110-124
The Upper Lawn Folly Solar Pavilion
This article contributes a new point of view: consider the Upper Lawn Pavilion by
Alison and Peter Smithson as an intentioned heir to the English gardening tradition
and especially the Arts and Crafts garden, with references to Edwin Lutyens
and Gertrude Jekyll, among others.
The research delves deeper into the analysis of the pavilion as part of a small
domestic garden and, in turn, in relation to the landscape. The weekend house of
the Smithsons is a “cottage garden” with its topiary peacock, set deep in the great
idyllic garden of the Fonthill estate, fruit of the best Picturesque English landscape
tradition. It represents the types of constructions for the garden, with a long and
deep tradition in England, reinterpreting simultaneously the concept of “folly”,
“gazebo”, “pavilion”, “garden room” and “glass room”.The Smithsons English garden
Ana Rodríguez García
Págs. 125-147
The instrumental recovering of History in the Dumberton Oaks Pre-Columbian Pavilion
The small, delicate pavilion intended for the expansion of Dumbarton Oaks
Museum has been a work forgotten or feared by critics whose author, brilliant
architect Philip Johnson, stood out at that moment as a strong advocate of the
recovery of those values of History and the encounter of Architecture with Nature.
His contact with Mildred Bliss and his experience in Dumbarton were decisive for
the transformation that Johnson, a radical architect of steel and glass, went
through. The aim of this article is to delve in disclose the values of this relevant
relationship between Architecture, History and Landscape and vindicate this work
as a key piece for understanding the critical review undertaken by modern architecture
in the 1950s.
Ramón Pico Valimaña
Págs. 148-158
Surrealism in the Burle Marx landscapes
Brazilian artist Roberto Burle Marx completely revolutionized the modern landscape
design in the 1930s by projecting the terrace garden of the Ministry of
Education and Health of Rio de Janeiro in a pictorial way. In this project, he
invented an astonishing compositional mechanism in which the Biomorphic
Surrealism became a heavenly three-dimensional space built entirely with plants.
Taking Jean Arp works as a reference, Burle Marx created a method of overlaying
chromatic-vegetal layers, adding his finding to those that had occurred in Europe
in the previous decade in avant-garde art, with the contribution of modern architects.
The result is an exercise in cultural anthropophagy by which the sensual
curves of Brazilian landscape become surrealistic abstractions, that influence the
production of architects such as Oscar Niemeyer.“Roberto Burle Marx paints with plants” Lucio Costa.
Darío Álvarez Álvarez
Págs. 159-175
Paco Rabanne: architect without architecture?
Architecture and clothing are, seemingly, antagonistic disciplines. But throughout
history we can see how architects have written about fashion, have built buildings
in its service or even designed dresses or accessories. Similarly, many couturiers
and fashion designers have found inspiration in architecture. They have inherited
its tools or have collaborated with recognized architects for the conception of their
designs.
The figure of Paco Rabanne sets a new paradigm in fashion design. Trained as an
architect at l'École de Beaux Art in Paris between 1951 and 1963, going on to
apply his architectural knowledge creating dresses. Influenced by the artistic
avant-garde, as well as by the use of new materials and forms in the architecture
of the moment, his work bursts into the panorama of the convulsive 60's, blowing
up the traditional conception of fashion design. He introduced materials and techniques
foreign to fashion, but proper to the construction of buildings. His innovative
character contributes to establish a parallelism, hitherto undeveloped between
the two disciplines.Transposition of technics and materials between disciplines
Marta Muñoz Martín
Págs. 176-185
The object in the frame of life
In the contemporary domestic context, which the new ways of life claim more open
and freer, objects participate in the organization and qualification of the space
thanks to their new semantic facet. In this configuration process the elements act,
on the one hand distributing and ordering, organized in systems based on geometric
and topological relationships, and on the other hand adding a new psychological
dimension to the new areas, remaining as symbolic elements or acting as
mechanisms that influence the spatial experience and its perception. In this article,
an approach is made to the vision of the object in the contemporary framework
following the sociological studies of Baudrillard, Moles or Barthes, among others,
and through exhibitions and fairs of furniture and household items that proliferate
from the 60's in a consumer society. Also establishes a system of analysis that
determines a correspondence between characteristics and qualities that are typical
of contemporary domestic space and the modes of action of the objects in such
environments, noting, this way, that the objects contribute to configure areas with
certain properties thanks to their modes of relationship and connection into the
space.Over the role of the object in the configuration of the contemporary domestic space
Manuel Carmona García
Págs. 186-198
Architecture and landscape of the modern industry in Alcalá de Henares
The quick industrial growth of municipalities such as Alcalá de Henares during the
50s and 60s of the last century will produce radical transformations in its urban
morphology and landscape, but in turn will stimulate the emergence of a modern
architecture of industry, as symbol of the Franco´s regime development policy.
Industrial complexes that synthesize the international discussions on the modern
industrial project in its double formal and technical aspects, and expressive of
both the competitiveness of the companies and of the modernism´s inflections in
this period, bringing together productive efficiency and formal singularity as corporate
image.
M. Ángeles Layuno Rosas
Págs. 199-217
English summary
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Fascinating and detestable
Artialisation and integration of industrial landscapes
Miguel Ángel Aníbarro y Esther Valdés
Págs. 1-18
Cigar factories in Spain (1731-1945)
The first moments of industrial production in Spain resembled a laboratory of
solutions, not only for the approach to the new production methods, but also for
the development of a type of architecture that should address to a new functional
subject heretofore nonexistent. In the case of cigar factories in Spain, these circumstances,
linked to the manufacturing source of the activity, determined the
architectural production, which was shaped both by the assimilation of references
of other architectural types, as by the contribution of authors with engineering
experience. The engineers of the Spanish tobacco companies were well aware of the
relationship of the factory with their environment and the productive space itself,
transcending the mere functional significance. All these aspects, along with the
prominent role of tobacco estates monopoly in the peninsular territorial productive
panorama, supported the embodiment of a particular architecture that developed
independently to coeval theories and contemporary trends in industrial architecture.Design approaches and architectural references of an evolving
model of productive space
Carolina Castañeda López
Págs. 19-36
Gasometers of Zollverein
Story of a singular recovery
Cristina Tartás y Rafael Guridi
Págs. 37-48
Ideology of classical telephone architecture
The industrial building as advertisement
Javier García Algarra
Págs. 49-62
Generation Islands
The article delves into the territories historically dedicated to the generation of
energy in Spain and more specifically in the landscape built by the great complexes
for the production of electricity and hydrocarbons, promoted by the public sector
between 1940 and 1965. It develops a discursive approach through the analysis
of photographs and documentary films available on archive holdings of the
companies. The studied images show the aesthetic and cultural conflict that
marked the arrival of the great artifacts of energy to rural and natural areas. They
offer an alternative to ordinary perception, forcing to cope mentally with their
intensity and power. Therefore, they can address the conflict that introduces the
industrial landscape in general, as the related to energy in particular, in the emotional
relationship of individuals with their surrounding environment.The visual discourse around energy factories, 1940-1965
Manuel Rodrigo de la O Cabrera
Págs. 63-77
Iron lineajes
Industrial buildings of the early period of Kahn began a synergistic process with
assembly processes, depending increasingly of the Fordist production chain,
which can resemble, in its typical linear movement, to a train. In this way, the
numerous assembly plants for Ford or Packard vehicles are buildings of industrial
production and at the same time, loading and unloading cargo rail terminals.
There was therefore an interesting transfer of typological elements of railway constructions
to Kahn´s industrial architecture, which is analyzed here by characteristic
examples such as terminals, freight houses, train sheds, depots or engine
houses. The other major construction type of unequivocal railway origin were
metallic bridges, which in turn were assimilated into the larger structures of buildings
and hangars. With them, solutions to problems of span hitherto unknown
were provided, suggesting an important role, both here and in other cases, in the
use of overhangs.Typological use of railway precedents in Albert Kahn
Luis Pancorbo e Inés Martín Robles
Págs. 78-103
On both sides of the Atlantic
Within the path of KRJDA study, both buildings were set as new opportunities to
investigate the space of industrial architecture. They represent the search for the
style for the job inherited from his master, Eero Saarinen, who had previously collaborated
with J. Irwin Miller, the customer of the factories, in several projects in
Columbus, Ohio. The aim is to review and compare concepts that define these two
projects built for the same client but with different functional requirements and in
different countries. In Darlington plant the problem will focus mainly on constructive
solutions, while in Walesboro the typology and functional approach of an
industrial building was redefined. Darlington is listed Grade II since 1993 and
Walesboro has been renovated respecting its original spirit, deserving both of them
an outstanding place in the twentieth century industrial heritage.Two factories of Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo for Cummins
Engine Company
Laura Sánchez Carrasco
Págs. 104-119
The cured meat factory of Segovia
The cured meat factory "Aqueduct" is one of the most disturbing and enigmatic
buildings belonging to Madrid organicism, and also an almost isolated case, as the
architects of that trend barely worked with industrial typology.
Realized by the architect Curro Inza, the building has a difficult and baffling explanation
in its shape. Why did he conceive a so inexplicable factory? What are the
clues hidden in this project? How does he reach that end result? This text explains
how within the architecture of the author, Segovia is the end of a series and the
best example of the “additive” projects of Inza, which could be qualified as matbuilding.
Access for the first time to the personal archive of the architect has
released an up to now new material, that can show how was the process management
and commissioning of the factory and the different versions (never published)
that made the author before reaching the final constructed building. The fabric is
BIC since 2013.Diagrams and matbuildings
Ángel Verdasco
Págs. 120-135
The footprint of the agro-alimentary industrial past in
Cantabria´s landscape
Due to its variety and fragmentation, agro- alimentary sector in Cantabria is complex.
Their establishments are also generally of small scale with some exceptions
of modern medium-sized factories. It requires then a laborious fieldwork to achieve
a minimally complete record. In many cases the installations have fallen in longterm
disuse, have disappeared or have undergone major transformations. As a
result of this work, the article gathers in an orderly manner the main heritage
items of the flour, dairy, canning and tobacco sectors, together with complementary
elements such as abattoirs and markets. In them, issues such as the topography
or the coastal situation have been important determinants.
Gerardo J. Cueto Alonso
Págs. 136-152
Preserving the Modernism Vertical Urban Factory
Nina Rappaport
This essay is adapted in part, from the section, “Modern Factory Architecture” case
studies from Nina Rappaport’s book Vertical Urban Factory, published by Actar this
spring. Vertical Urban Factory began as an architecture studio, and then an exhibition,
which opened in New York in 2011 and traveled to Detroit and Toronto in 2012.
Last year the show was displayed at Archizoom at EPFL in Lausanne; Industry City,
Brooklyn; and the Charles Moore School of Architecture at Kean University, in New
Jersey. The project continues as a think tank evaluating factory futures and urban
industrial potential.Nina Rappaport
Págs. 153-159
Padley Mill
The transformation into a house of an old mill from the mid- eighteen century in Padley
Gorg, within the now known as Peak District National Park in the vicinity of Sheffield,
UK, has raised a significant number of the problems of conservation and restauration
of ancient industrial heritage, focused and concentrated in a single building. To restore
and maintain the property as a museum or to make a significant change of use were
some of the dilemmas faced by the author. After the final decision, the architectural
work revealed as laborious, unexpected in its pre-existing conditions and opposed to
any attempt of developing a personal style. The result is a hybrid building which
shows its historical layers and, although modified, clearly better preserved than without
any intervention at all.A question of interpretation
Peter Blundell Jones
Págs. 160-170
Decorative Systems of Industrial Buildings
This article is a reprint of the original published in the journal Ezelsoren, Bulletin of
the Institute of History of Art, Architecture and Urbanism (IHAAU) of the Delft
University of Technology (TU Delft). It appeared in Volume III, Number 3, 2012 and is,
as indicated in the text, a sample of how far "the very extensive number of buildings
constructed since the beginning of industrialization in relation to many technical purposes,
from railway stations to slaughterhouses, from power plants to coal mines,
haven´t been sufficiently studied in relation to their ornamental and sculptural systems,
which in turn represent the reaction of the arts to the course of technological
development.” An artistic material still largely unexplored whose wealth is waiting to
be unveiled as an eloquent field of interpretation of the past.A foray into uncharted regions
Axel Föhl
Págs. 171-179
Architecture of the small and medium Dutch industry in the
postwar years
This text was first presented in English at the IX International Congress DOCOMOMO
of Ankara 2006 and later, with relevant enlargements, published in Dutch
in the journal Erfgoed van Industrie en Techniek, no. 2/3 in 2011. The Spanish
version presented here includes new images and is the most comprehensive of
those published. The work focuses on a selection of industrial buildings made in
the Netherlands, many of them the work of little known or almost anonymous
architects, and exemplifies how many of them achieved an interesting balance
between utility and beauty. With the focus on the visual image, it posits the existence
of a series of formal categories applied mainly to their emblematic fronts.
This reading clarifies the existence of shared strategies and helps to understand
design as a significant part of the legacy of modern architecture.Image and modernity
Rafael García
Págs. 180-187
English summary
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Castelvecchio and Hedmarksmusset.
The past as a foreign land
Marco Enia
Pags. 1-16
Dialectics between composition, material and construction in Curro Inza’s architecture
Ángel Verdasco
This article analyses two of Curro Inza’s early architecture Works, with the purpose
of approaching the organicist, Madrilian architect’s enigmatic architectural
style, and of finding the principles and ideas underlying his vision and style. We
take into consideration two different hypotheses: i), the architect follows a strategic
and projectual method which is independent of any explicit formal decision,
and ii) the architect applies a materic conception of architecture, oriented towards
brutalism. Such premises lead to Curro Inza’s discourse, a conception between
construction, forma and material which is responsible to a great extent of his project
decisions in his later works. This discourse is particularly important in order
to understand his architecture, and in order to change the perception his work has
had, recognizing on the contrary that his architectural strategies are extremely
modern.Ángel Verdasco
Pags. 17-25
Architecture and hydroelectric industry
The works of Ignacio
Alvarez Castelao and Juan José Elorza for Electra de Viesgo in Asturias
Javier Molina Sánchez and Fernando Vela Cossío
Pags. 26-38
“Latinamericanists dicourses in the architectural debats of the 80s”
The Latin American Architecture Seminars
María Rosa Zambrano Torres
Pags. 39-53
The regionalist contribution in United States
After World War II, modern architecture was facing a “crossroads”: architects had
to choose between keeping their overall rigid obedience to the "functionalist" architecture
or find new means of expression. While Modernism had not failed as such,
it seemed clear that he did need some revisions. Also during these years in the US
there was a large number of regional –or regionalist- interpretations of the Modern
Movement, some of which became genuine great American contributions to modernity.
This regionalism questioned the very importance of the International Style.
Thus, many European architects were forced to reevaluate their careers and their
principles, creating a "new philosophy" of architecture. A decade later, those
thoughts were key driver concepts to an author like Robert Venturi.Bibliographic
genesis of a "new philosophy" architectural
Raúl Rodríguez García
Pags. 54-72
A historical legacy
On the occasion of the publication of Modern Architecture: Romanticism and
Reintegration’s first Spanish edition. This essay aims to discuss the impact of
Henry-Russell Hitchcock’s book –published in 1929– on the history of architecture.
In spite of being the first history of modern architecture written in English,
Modern Architecture fell into oblivion due to the success of Hitchcock’s subsequent
book, co-authored with Philip Johnson: The International Style:
Architecture since 1922. Discussing the critical approaches to the text –from the
first book reviews to the latest historiographical studies– brings to light
Hitchcock’s contribution to the historiography of modern architecture. Henry-Russell Hitchcock and early
Modernism
Macarena de la Vega
Pags. 73-78
Hilberseimer: From the Hochhausstadt to the New City
José Antonio Sumay Rey
Around 1930, Ludwig Karl Hilbersimer begins a significant stage of review of his
first urban models, the Wohnstadt (Residential city, 1923) and the Hochhausstadt
(Highrise city, 1924) seeking to adapt to the intense social and political changes
experienced by the European society in those days, the final result of which is a
new model, more decentralized and integrated into the landscape, the New City (c.
1932). This paper has revised his research during that period, discovering an
accurate project methodology based on abstraction and elemental decomposition
which perform a detailed transit through the various levels of the modern project:
from the room to the metropolis.José Antonio Sumay Rey
Pags. 79-96
The Law of the Clock
Although the machine metaphor is one of the most genuine expressions of the ideology
of the Modern Movement, its raison d’être cannot be understood outside of a
broader cultural history whose origin, like so many aspects of modernity, is rooted
in the different aesthetic crises of the Enlightenment and the 17th-century
querelles. This fact is ignored by the heroic historiography, in which the machine
metaphor is considered a find of the 20th-century Zeitgeist, when in fact its
genealogy goes back to the mechanistic ideology built under the influence of
Cartesianism, and expressed through some concepts which were transferred from
philosophy and science to architecture: ‘composition of parts’, ‘system’, ‘calculation’,
or ‘function’.Origins of the Machine Metaphor in
Architecture
Eduardo Prieto
Pags. 97-108
Via non difficilis
Since Alberti’s theoretical proposal in De re aedificatoria (ca. 1450-1485), the
access road to the villa is one of its defining components par excellence, very early
integrated as part of its overall composition. In relation to this organization element,
I study a set of villas which have an axial development -mainly within the
terraced type- with access roads of a remarkable length, all belonging to the
Renaissance period, from the oldest examples of Quaracchi (ca. 1453) and Castello
(ca. 1538-1550), among others in Tuscany, in the area of Rome or Veneto, to some
Spanish instances such as La Fresneda (ca. 1562-1569) and El Bosque de Béjar
(ca. 1567).The access roads in Renaissance villas with axial development
José Muñoz Domínguez
Pags. 109-128
Pictures collection about garden in the Netherlands during the Renaissance and Mannerism
Carmen Toribio
This contribution summarizes the main visual records existing in bibliographic
sources on the Dutch gardens in the second half of the sixteenth century and in
the first half of the seventeenth. The investigation begins with data from the literary
references of the time on the garden by prominent Dutch humanist and writers.
The selection of images is based largely on the inspection of all major Dutch
landscaping treaties, and likewise, of Germans with great impact in the
Netherlands, as the case of Joseph Furttenbach, or French like Mollet. Literature
sources and archives indicated in the work and in its notes have been followed
with regard to engravings and art prints.Carmen Toribio
Pags. 129-136
Three articles written by Max Bill
Maite Escaño
In this contribution are presented the translations of three articles by Max Bill of
great importance on his thinking about design in the years before the creation of
the school of Ulm. The first two, written in 1946 and 1949, dealt with some own
experiences on design and with the ideas of beauty and function in the design
respectively. The second is a lecture given in the Swiss Werkbund in 1948 which
debate arose the itinerant exhibition "Die gute Form" (Good Form). The third,
though written in 1979, is a critical commentary on the ceiling lamp of the
Bauhaus, which later exerted influence on the ones created by him and described
in the first article.Maite Escaño
Pags. 137-148
Architecture and industry
In this short documentary work are collected classified and ordered the main existing
library collections in the library of the School of Architecture (ETSAM) of the
Polytechnic University of Madrid on the subject of architecture and industrial heritage.
The reason that led to this specific search was the exhibition entitled "The
Factory: Industrial architecture in the ETSAM funds Library" opened on April 8,
2015. Its purpose is to try that the selection work is not lost after removal of the
exhibition and may be available to scholars and interested people. By their nature
they are excluded funds relating to public works.A bibliographical research in the
architecture college of the UPM
Rafael García
Pags. 149-156
English summary
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Traducción: Gina Cariño
The Sanatorium Zonnestraal
Origin and development of the project
Cecilia Ruiloba Quecedo
Pags. 1-17
Arquitecture of Airports
During the 1930s Europe witnessed the coming to fruition of early efforts to create a new sort of building: the airport terminal. Architects and engineers struggled to define its essential layout and technical demands, as well as its cultural and aesthetic implications. ¿How did these first designers deal with the invention of a new kind of architectural type? Among many other, four examples of airport terminal have been chosen to illustrate the successes and failures of the first mature approaches to this type of building, which was born at the beginning of the 20th century and has been in constant revision up to the present time: Madrid-Barajas (1933), Paris-Le Bourget (1937), Dublin-Collinstown (1940) and Berlin-Tempelhof, (started in 1936).
Four air terminal examples of the 30s
Concepción Bibián Díaz
Pags. 18-36
The Great Classic Department Store Building
Architecture for the Labour
Rafael Serrano Sáseta
Pags. 37-51
“Von Innen nach Aussen”
Linked in broad terms to the functionalist tradition, architectural organicism actually has a very wide range of connotations, which have had their respective vicissitudes in the last two centuries. All these connotations are derived, however, from the ideological influences that at the turn of the 18th century – with the normative tradition of classicism finally exhausted – took place between German romantic philosophy on the one hand, and arts and architecture on the other. This intermingling was based on the idea that buildings, like organisms, should be organized “von Innen nach Aussen”; that is, from inside out. This article traces the philosophical origin of the metaphor and tak.
Philosophical sources of the organicism in architecture
Eduardo Prieto
Pags. 52-66
Le Corbusier 24NC
Ever considered the corbusian habitat for excellence, the appartement of Le Corbusier at 24NC Porte Molitor is an individual villa over a rent collective building edified –as he used to say-- on Ville Radieuse conditions. Radieuse, radiant, is the word used to define the ideal city: a modern urbs imagined within a large park. This paper tries to analyse this maison radieuse: the place and the space where Le Corbusier lived in and his ways of living in along the time, from 1934 to his death in 1965. To study the double aspect of habitat and living. To analyse the place and the space where Le Corbusier lived, at his projects and his metaphors: the maison radieuse, the urbs in ortu, the crystal house, the labour archipielago, with its different islands of paints and books, of papers and memories.Because 24NC suppose the transit from project to life: from planning Ville Radieuse, to living in.
An inhabited fragment of the Ville Radieuse
José Ramón Alonso Pereira
Pags. 67-82
Adolf Behne and the modern architecture
Emilia Hernández Pezzi
Adolf Behne was a lucid German critic from the period between the wars. He was actively involved in the evolution of the cultural trends of the time and, despite his own implication, he interpreted and valued them correctly. He related art and architecture, and understood that only a strong social compromise could found this link, being able this way to detect the continuity between aparently distant experiences such as modern expresionism and rationalism and link them with the ortodox funcionalists trends from the end of the 1920s. From his privileged contacts with artists and architects he observed, analized, judged and acted as a catalyst for the intense transformations that marked those turbulent times, skilfully selecting the characters that pictured them best.
Emilia Hernández Pezzi
Pags. 83-94
The Vitruvian treaty illustrated
Any drawing representing a building implies by itself a high level of abstraction and conceptualization, because it supposes the translation into graphic elements of all the complex information kept by our senses. This situation becomes even more extreme when this process does not begin from the direct observation of the building, but from a spoken or written language. For this reason, the drawing of a building which has been described in a narration, talks on fact more about its author’s point of view, than about the one who is describing it, or even more than the real building itself. The drawings of the basilicas using Vitruvius’ treatise as a reference, and made by Fra Giocondo (1511), Cesariano (1523), Palladio (1556, 1570), Perrault (1673), Galiani (1758) and Ortiz y Sanz (1778), more than talking about roman’s author ideas, allow us to know the thoughts of their respective authors.
The basilica drawings
Juan Calduch Cervera
Pags. 95-109
Reconsidering Emil Kaufmann’s Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier
Macarena de la Vega
The aim of this essay is to re-open and re-read the content of Emil Kaufmann’s Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier. Even though Panayotis Tournikiotis and Anthony Vidler included it in their discussions of the historiography of modern architecture, this investigation recommends a needed reconsideration of Emil Kaufmann as a pioneer historian of the Age of Reason. Three ideas can be highlighted: first, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux is the main character of Kaufmann’s discourse; second, the architecture around 1800 needed a reevaluation; and third, his work takes place in a time of searching for a new science of art and for a new history of architecture. To sum up, it can be concluded that Kaufmann is a transitional figure between a previous generation of art historians who established fundamental concepts and principles; and others of his own generation who embarked on the hard task of considering modern architecture as a subject of historical research.
Macarena de la Vega
Pags. 110-118
The several times pioneer chapel Bakócz
Laura Corrales Pérez
Built in the first decade of the 16th century in the Hungarian city of Esztergom, the burial chapel of Cardinal Tamás Bakócz abandoned the dominant Gothic style to constitute the earliest and most perfect example of Renaissance architecture north of the Alps. Surprisingly close to Italian examples from the same period, this Hungarian building was strongly conditioned by the artistic background of its building masters. However, its main influence came from the leading figure of the Cardinal and his close relationship with the Pope Julius II, who was working at that time in the project for the new Vatican basilica. It is also highly relevant the evolution of the chapel after Bakócz's death. It survived to 150 years of Turkish occupation before being cut into pieces and transferred to a new place. This pioneer process took place in the early beginning of XIX century and is still surprising for the modern concept about restoration that it involves.
Laura Corrales Pérez
Pags. 119-134
Willem Marinus Dudok
The schools build by Dudok in Hilversum in the periode between the two World Wars form a serie considered as a reference within the educational architecture. Their interest rely no only in that they show the stylistic evolution of Dudok in that years but also in the character as civil monuments and urban milestones which they were conceived. Reduced in their dimensions and with only a small number of classrooms, each school had a different design becoming in this way a recogntion element in his neighbourhood. The variety of forms was also psycologicaly addapted to the age of the children. The article is a translation from Dutch to Spanish of the chapter “De school als architectonische en stedebouwkundige opgave” in the book Willem Marinus Dudok. Architect-stedebouwkundige 1884-1974, by Herman van Bergeijk, and offers a critic overview of the whole group of schools. Also includes information on the relationships and influences received from the contemporary movements of school reform, especially those initiated in Germany.
The school as work of architecture and urbanism
Herman van Bergeijk (Translation: Rafael García)
Pags. 135-154
Welby Northmore Pugin
Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin excelled as “ideologist” of architecture. However, Pugin’s architectural theory derives from clear and distinct concepts that offer a rational analysis of the architecture of his time. It is in fact these concepts, which appear in their first traits in Contrasts and then fully developed in The true principles of pointed or Christian architecture: set forth in two lectures delivered at St.Marie's, Oscott (1841), what this paper has focused on, by means of analysing a series of selected quotes. They include also several commentaries from some of his more importan critics of the recent times. As far as posible, this paper-document aims to present what we think Pugin believed that architecture should be.
Ideology and theory based in his texts
Daniel Dávila Romano
Pags. 155-167
English summary
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Matilde Ucelay
The first Spanish woman architect in history
María José Durán González, Ana María Escudero Domínguez, Juan Núñez Valdés y Elena Regodón Domínguez.
Vegaviana. An architectonic lesson
José Antonio Flores Soto
The project of the new small village of Vegaviana in Caceres province was part of the extensive work developed by the National Institute of Colonization (INC) as a materialization of the agrarian utopia of the Francoism. However, conceived within a new architectonic and urban sensitivity by its main author, José Luis Fernández del Amo, it meant an important breaking point with the then prevailing traditionalist conception. This led to its early recognition immediately on completion in the late 50s in various national and international events. In 1967 it was also awarded with the National Architecture Prize, having been recently recognized as a Cultural Interest Site.José Antonio Flores Soto
Pags. 18-52
The “streets in the air”
Parallelisms between life and architecture
Ángela Rodríguez Fernández
Pags. 53-66
The DNA of the Cordoba Mosque
The aim of this work is to study if the birth of restoration as a concept modifies or not the way of intervening in historic buildings. As an illustrative example the Cordoba Mosque is analyzed. The proposal is to classify the interventions realized depending on how they have modified its identity. To do so the idea is to set a parallel between the identity of the building and of the living beings, as both have patent and latent traits. The identity of organisms is present in a latent way in what scientists call genotype, and in patent way in what its named phenotype. The DNA concept binds with the genotype and its repetition without alteration leads to cloning.Genotype, phenotype and cloning
Leyre Mauleón Pérez
Pags. 67-97
Maison de Verre / Zonestraal. A tale of two buildings
Jan Molema
Since the decade of the 1960s the Zonnestraal sanatorium in Hilversum and Maison de Verre in Paris have been described extensively in the literature of modern architecture. However, there has been no effort to put them together in one story. This essay is an effort to amend this gap. Both works are intimately connected through their authors: Bernard Bijvoet, as co-designer of the plans of the Maison, and Johannes Duiker, who worked with the former in the preliminaries of Zonnestraal, although he completed it alone at the same time as the design for the house was finished. The paper also questions, offering well- founded conjectures, the conventional belief that they needed a new metallic structure to support the unchanged house located above the Maison de Verre.Jan Molema
Pags. 98-132
Kahn / Kubrick. Compositional symmetries
Ángel L. Camacho Pina
Key parts of film and architectural history, both in the work of Stanley Kubrick and of Louis Kahn, are strongly tied to certain common concepts; among them and above the rest, the idea of formal order, eventually not independent of the ideal of perfection. Leaving in the background significant biographical analogies, in this paper we address the possible convergences between formal aspects of both authors: Kahn's architectural composition and the staging practiced by Kubrick. The two of them also developed their work in a particularly intense way, with full control of their creations and exercised their profession almost exclusively from the perspective of the work of art. Ángel L. Camacho Pina
Pags. 133-150
English summary
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Traducción: Gina Cariño
The Gallery
From the Loggia to the Pinacothèque
Lilia Maure
Pags. 1-28
On European Art of the Second Half of the 19th Century
Ángel Moreno Dopazo
The article reflects on today’s lack of appreciation for the values, often disdained, of the supposedly remote art and culture of the 19th century. From that rich world of references and associations, the article throws special light on the figures of the realist painter Alma-Tadema, the architects of Vienna’s Ring, and the composer Richard Wagner. An analysis of the complex pictorial universe of the Dutch artist is combined with a reduced selection of architectural works that culminate with new spaces for the most clearly German of 19th-century arts: music.Ángel Moreno Dopazo
Pags. 29-40
Laurent’s workshop and studio
an unknown project of Velázquez Bosco
Miguel Ángel Baldellou
Pags. 41-49
The Birth of Zonnestraal
Jan Molema
The article is a detailed and almost detective-like investigation into relations between the architects Duijker, Bijvoet, and Berlage, the union leader Van Zutphen, and the politician Johan Albarda during the years prior to the building of the sanatorium, and into the atmosphere surrounding the commission. Both Van Zutphen and Albarda presented the possible role of the left wing at this stage of the career of Duiker and Bijvoet. As for Berlage’s participation in this context, some data provided by more specialized historiographies are questioned.Jan Molema
Pags. 50-59
Authentic Dutch
Pavilions and fair premises of the Nieuwe Bouwen
Rafael García
Previous issues have shown the Dutch Modern Movement’s substantial dedication to designing stands and other exhibition elements as something complementary to architecture. This new study stretches this scope of action and proceeds to regard exhibition architecture, through the design of pavilions and fair premises, as an entity of its own. Water, the countryside, and geography together count among the protagonists in projects.Pavilions and fair premises of the Nieuwe Bouwen
Rafael García
Pags. 60-82
Atlantropa
Architecture and City for an Electric Dream of the Mediterranean
Plácido González Martínez
The utopian project Atlantropa of the German architect Hermann Sörgel aimed to partly dry up the Mediterranean Sea and thereby produce electric energy at an unknown scales. Through evaporation and diversion, a colossal dam in the Strait of Gibraltar would make the sea level drop by as much as 200 meters. Surprisingly, architects like Behrens, Poelzig, Mendelsohn, Van Eesteren, Fritz Höger and Emil Fahremkamp came to support and contribute to the project. Architecture and City for an Electric Dream of the Mediterranean
Plácido González Martínez
Pags. 83-92
Transfigurations
Notes on the Attican landscape in Cinema
Spiros Papadopoulos
Analyses of relationships established between different cinematographic images of Athens and its surroundings are an important source of knowledge about its existence and evolution in the past decades. Its plasticity and luminosity, as well as its variety within simplicity, are surely as present in film as they were in the romantic classical landscape. Moreover, elements like ruins, the sea close by, the chaos of urban growth, and the human and social relations forged therein all contributed to the unique thematic palette of this chapter of Greek cinema.Notes on the Attican landscape in Cinema
Spiros Papadopoulos
Pags. 93-102
English summary
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Transcending the “Type” Concept in Contemporary Architecture
Lilia Maure
This article analyzes the evolution that international architecture began at the close of the 20th century by undergoing a formal and conceptual change. This change has gone about consolidating in these initial years of the new century, and its origins lie in a desire to sever the contemporary architectural project from all historic references, particularly “type.” Contrary to the universal values preached by the final avant-garde movements, creative freedom comes to the fore in today’s new architectural structures. Lilia Maure
Pags. 1-8
Imported Modernity
History of a Study
Ana Esteban Maluenda
After the first years of the Spanish Postwar, a small group of young architects who had started training before the war were quick to react to the dominant “national” style, establishing the prospects of linking up with modernity. Through fundamental channels of information entry, which are analyzed in this article that has been written as a summary of a doctoral thesis, this group of architects made updating and internal debate on international currents possible in Spain. History of a Study
Ana Esteban Maluenda
Pags. 9-36
Entretiens
Genesis, Ideas, Influences
Antoni Ramon Graells
The recent, painstakingly made Spanish translation of Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc’s Entretiens sur l’architecture has brought to us an influential and controversial text of the second half of the 19th century. In this text, the author reflects on the rules of architecture in relation to art, technique, history, and the teaching of architecture. The article scans the genesis of the book, linking it to Viollet’s biography and thinking, according to Sir John Summerson, one of the pillars of modern architecture. Genesis, Ideas, Influences
Antoni Ramon Graells
Págs 37-52
The Art of Exhibiting
Dutch Exhibition Spaces II
Rafael García
Dutch fairground exhibitions underwent a boom at the start of the 1940s, coinciding with the first years of the German Occupation. They were a continuation of the tendencies of previous years, the subject of Part I of García’s article, with a new awareness of the importance of the fair stand as an architectural and social theme. Members of the Dutch ‘New Construction’ group played a key role in the modern development of the stand. The forced ending of this journey in 1943 put a close to this brief but significant experience. Dutch Exhibition Spaces II
Rafael García
Pags. 53-94
Berlin: Architecture and City in the Last Ten Years
(1910-2009)
Permanence and Transformation in the City Center
José Manuel García Roig
Berlin can be considered the architectural city of the 20th century. Because of its tortured political life, it is where the most critical events of the history of Europe have taken place. This has had a direct bearing on its territory, which in turn has given rise to all kinds of reflections having to do with the relation between New Architecture and Historical City, from the Greater Berlin competition of 1910 to the reconstruction plans of 1945 through Interbau 57, IBA 85/87, and the current projects connected to Berlin’s new capital status. (1910-2009)
Permanence and Transformation in the City Center
José Manuel García Roig
Págs. 95-118
Leberecht Migge’s
History of a Study
Isabel de Cárdenas
Migge was among the most influential landscape architects of the Weimar Republic’s Germany, and one of the first ever to use the adjective “green” with political intentions. His revolutionary ideas clashed with the pragmatism of the more moderate positions. The Green Manifesto attacked the 20th-century city, bourgeois and industrial culture, and the greed that was behind the conception of that city. After the war, his pseudonym, “Green Spartacus,” aligned him at the outset with Spartacus-inspired ideologies. History of a Study
Isabel de Cárdenas
Pags. 119-134
‘As found’ and the experience of fragment
Image and pre-existence debate in British artistic production during immediate postwar years
Ramón Serrano Avilés
Due to particular historical circumstances, canonical interpretations on artistic production during immediate postwar years have moved aside from certain aspects of modernity. Specially significant were those raised by Dadaism, its reflections on modern city and the role assigned both to image and objects in an emerging consumer society, which this essay attempts to clarify concerning its specific legacy in United Kingdom. Image and pre-existence debate in British artistic production during immediate postwar years
Ramón Serrano Avilés
Pags. 135-150
English summary
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Reversing the Monumental
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Henry Vicente
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was the first truly abstract monument ever to go up in the United States. As a work resisting conventional lines of classification, it stayed in the margins of the architectural debates of the time. To boot, it was designed by a 21-year-old student of Asian origins. All this unleashed one of the most heated controversies ever to have surrounded a public work.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Henry Vicente
Pags. 1-24
In Holland staat een huis
Dutch exhibition stands and fair premises in the Interbellum period
Rafael García
This article is the first part of a panoramic view of the work undertaken by the members of Holland’s New Construction in the realm of fair premises and exhibition stands during the period between the two wars. It gives special attention to the major exhibition that was planned for Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. Because of the German occupation, this project was not carried out. The exhibition was to be named In Holland is A House, the title of the article.
Dutch exhibition stands and fair premises in the Interbellum period
Rafael García
Pags. 25-82
Paul Schmitthenner
The Unknown Bricklayer
José Manuel García Roig
Schmitthenner is mostly known for having subscribed to the most conservative currents of German architecture during the years of the Weimar Republic. Too, for having very enthusiastically welcomed the coming to power of the National Socialist Party and been an active member of it. But to confine his figure to this part of this life is to ignore the reach and importance that his work had in certain questions that have a bearing on the theory and practice of contemporary architecture.
The Unknown Bricklayer
José Manuel García Roig
Págs 83-112
Notes on Irregularity
Reconsidering the Picturesque
Manuel de Prada
The taste for the picturesque, the principles of which were defined in the course of the second half of the 18th century, has in architecture given rise to the taste for irregularity. At first, picturesque irregularity represented natural freedom. Later, opposed to the classicist order, it was seen as a condition of functional architecture. As a result, order and regularity progressively lost their power to represent the natural order of things.
Reconsidering the Picturesque
Manuel de Prada
Pags. 113-132
The Cult of Modern Monuments
Restauration of houses of the Modern Movement
María Teresa Valcarce
This article is a series of reflections and questions having to do with the durability of Modern Movement housing projects and the growing interest there is in preserving them and actually restoring them to their original states. Recovering specific initial forms also means recovering the ideas that made them possible or at least fostered them. Such restoration jobs will always be valuable additions to the ever-unfinished project of modernity.
Restauration of houses of the Modern Movement
María Teresa Valcarce
Págs. 133-140
English summary
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Traducción: Gina Cariño
One of the most important of illustrated journals on modern culture and art was published in the Netherlands from 1927 to 1929. It brought together the most outstanding figures of the literary, social, and artistic avant-gardse. This article gives a broad panorama of the magazine's history and figures, accompanied by three texts by its founder, Arthur Muller Lehning, and a significant selection of images.
Pags. 3-52
Pags. 3-52
Max Taut could be included in that broad, still unwritten chapter of architectural history that covers architects of a Modern Movement stretching from the First World War well into the sixties. In the course of that extended period Taut built an oeuvre of extraordinary quality, an oeuvre nevertheless little known of, even within the exclusively German scene. Among other things, his biography reveals a clear commitment to the reconstruction of his country and a view of its future.
Pags. 53-74
Pags. 53-74
The architect Jan Duiker died, at the age of 44, early in the morning of February 23, 1935, leaving a select oeuvre of unquestionable quality with buildings like the Zonestraal hospital, the Open-Air School, the Cineac, or the Hotel Gooiland. A good number of biographical data heretofore unpublished in Spanish appears in this article, along with a perspective view of Duiker's works that amounts to an extensive presentation of his life's journey.
Pags. 75-100
Pags. 75-100
The meaning of montage and the techniques of collage
Manuel de Prada
Montage is the act of superposing or assembling different things. Montage is skillfully piecing something together so that it serves a purpose. This requires art. Not a capricious art, however, but an art that by using the author as an intermediary presents humankind with the natural order. Modern montages would try to present the fragmentary and absurd character of everyday life in the bosom of the capitalist system of production, as well as the alienated, depersonalized condition of modern man.
Manuel de Prada
Pags. 101-114
Rebuilding Coventry
A pioneer example of postwar european architecture
Roberto Osuna
Before the Second World War, the English city drew up plans for a thorough renovation of its center. After its 1940 bombing, these plans served as a basis for designing a pedestrian commercial zone that was a precedent of all those that would be built all over the continent in later years. The municipal architect Donald Gibson was the main author of the plan, which included the holding of a competition for the reconstruction of the cathedral, for many one of the most significant works of postwar architecture in Great Britain.
A pioneer example of postwar european architecture
Roberto Osuna
Pags. 115-130
English summary
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Nieuwe Bouwen's Inner Space
Elinoor Bergvelt (ed.)
Presentation: Rafael García
Although much headway was made within the Nieuwe Bouwen in furniture and interior fittings, as a specific theme these have hardly been addressed. Yet the contribution of Dutch designers and architects in this field has been internationally acclaimed since the twenties. This article analyzes the principal experiments in the floor plan and interior design of modern mass housing in the Netherlands.
Elinoor Bergvelt (ed.)
Presentation: Rafael García
Pags. 3-30
The Dutch magazine Wendingen was traditionally considered the principal voice of the Amsterdam school. However, an analysis of its contents reveals that the part dedicated to architecture presented a wider range of currents and architects. This article presents that panorama with detailed information of its elements.
Pags. 31-56
Pags. 31-56
Some way or another, the configuration of the void has a bearing on all artistic manifestations, including the less material ones like music. Since the early years of the 20th century, many artists have managed to activate the void and shape with it significant forms that are able to transcend the traditional solid-hollow and interior-exterior dichotomies. After the twenties, many began to explain what they composed with voids.
Pags. 57-84
Pags. 57-84
The architectonic vanguard of Socialist Realism:
Arkin´s reasoning power
Carlos Flores Pazos
This article tries to draw renewed interest to the typology of the huge complex, unknown and varied in the West where it was simplistically called Stalinist architecture, but which we ought to call the avant-garde of socialist realism. The black legend that accompanies it, more out of ignorance than of reality, will die in time, and the virtues of the complex duly recognized. Certain architects of this transition period went ahead in their criticism and work-manifestos of what decades later would be put forward by the Velasca Tower.
Arkin´s reasoning power
Carlos Flores Pazos
Pags. 85-94
Cataguases:
A little city inside Brazil and its dwellings
María Marta Camisassa
The small city of Cataguases, situated in the southeast of the state of Minas Gerais, was culturally something exceptional in its area, even back at the end of the 19th century. Here, from 1940 to the early fifties, Niemeyer and other modern Brazilian architects carried out a group of interesting housing developments. Their projects were accompanied by landscaping and furnishing touches of a sometimes exclusive nature, coming together with avant-garde sculptures and other art objects.
A little city inside Brazil and its dwellings
María Marta Camisassa
Pags. 95-110
English summary
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Translation to the Spanish of an essay Manfred Bock wrote for the facsimile edition of the Dutch architectural journal De 8 en Opbouw. An in-depth trip through the major periods and events having to do with its origins and development, as well as with its editorial consequences or repercussions, the text is complemented by a selection of cover and inside illustrations of the publication´s twelve years of life.
Pags. 3-62
Pags. 3-62
In this analysis of The Netherlands House, two other Dudok designs of the same period - namely the Town Hall and North Cemetery of Hilversum - serve as references sharing a single notion of centrality that is rather exceptional in the architect´s oeuvre. The Netherlands House is also an important point of inflection toward Dudok´s adopting international modern language of the late thirties.
Pags. 63-80
Pags. 63-80
Hilversum and the Noordbegraafplaats:
An urban model for funerary space
Marta García Carbonero
Presentation: Rafael García
Dudok´s cemetery for Hilversum is unique in that it is conceived in close relation to the overall urban plan, becoming a key reference element and the core of a larger pinwheel composition. Using the analogy of a vegetal city, it can be understood to synthesize the 19th century traditions of a monumental graveyard and a cemetery park.
An urban model for funerary space
Marta García Carbonero
Presentation: Rafael García
Pags. 81-96
Bruno Taut and Japan
(With a text by Bruno Taut)
J. Manuel García Roig
The opening essay narrates the life of Bruno Taut from his quick leave of Germany to his voyage to and stint in Japan. There he would work intensely as writer, industrial designer and architect. In the piece by him, translated to the Spanish, Bruno Taut compares the monumental town of Nikko to the serene beauty of Katsura.
(With a text by Bruno Taut)
J. Manuel García Roig
Pags. 97-112
The Hertfordshire Schools
An art of teamwork building?
Roberto Osuna Redondo
This article describes the circumstances that in the wake of World War II gave rise to the establishment, in England´s Hertfordshire county, of a programme for the development of schools - one which put special emphasis on heretofore unusual aspects of projects, such as teamwork and collaboration between professionals and end-users.
An art of teamwork building?
Roberto Osuna Redondo
Págs. 113-128
Part 2 of an article published in our previous issue. Here it continues to unthread the ideas and works that nourished the conception and development of New Brutalism. An accurate documentation of the facts accompanies a view of architecture from the perspective of this current.
Pags. 129-140
Pags. 129-140
English summary
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Traducción: Gina Cariño
The text is one of few works that offer a panoramic compilation of modern mass housing during the interwar period. From the standpoint of a critical revision of the CIAM phenomenon, it analyzes its real repercussions on the housing programs and policies of different European countries. Although the material gathered here it is on the wole common knowledge to specialists, it has heretofore not been published in such an accessible form.
Pags. 3-54
Pags. 3-54
The "Poblados Dirigidos" of Madrid
Ana M. Esteban
Presentatión: Rafael García
The "Poblados Dirigidos", an operation undertaken in Madrid durind the fifties to urbanize slum settlements, was an unprecedented experience within Spain´s postwar architectural scene The involvement in the program of some of our finest architects, together with that of residents buildin their own homes, gave this large-scale proyect its unique character. The following essay is a tour of these districts, areas where modernity emerged as a new way of solving problem of peripheral slum settlements.
Ana M. Esteban
Presentatión: Rafael García
Pags. 55-80
On the occasion of the hundredth year since the birth of the Dutch architect Mart Stam, a compilation of biographic data has been published, as well a a bibliography that includes a virtually complete list of his writings. Both are based on the most important works on Mart Stam thas have so far been carried out, and can be considered an Spanish contribution to the centenary, in view of the near inexistence here of sufficiently important research on his figure.
Pags. 81-96
Pags. 81-96
Uthopian Thought, Germanness and Architecture
Karl Ernst Osthaus and Bruno Taut
J. Manuel García Roig
A critical commentary and two texts of B.Taut and K.E.Osthaus.Karl Ernst Osthaus and Bruno Taut
J. Manuel García Roig
To wrap up his cultural program, in 1919 Osthaus conceived the construction of a school. Taut in turn drew up a proyect with buildings accommodating classrooms, a museum, structures from which to supply the school community, and a glass tower -the "prayer house"- in the middle of it all. Besides a critique on its ideological context, we have printed separate texts concerning the proyect, one by Taut and the other by Osthaus.
Págs. 97-110
"Rites of passage": a revision of the functional model
Manuel de Prada
This study endeavors to explain why some English houses, old and new alike, broke their access axes, defying all functional logic: a significant phenomenon when related to the clashes between the different models and orders of England´s residential architecture. Such collisions came about when builders tried to reconciled the irregularity of traditional models (the medieval manor house and the picturesque castles and cotteges whqt werw so inspiring to John Nash) with the order and regularity of Italian models.
Manuel de Prada
Pags. 111-129
Ideas pertaining to New Brutalism, developed in England during the first half of the fifties, formed the groundwork of part of the architecture that was carried out from then on to the mid-sixties. This paper tries to sort out the factors that led to the definition and dissemination of these ideas, all the way to their publication in Reyner Banham´s The New Brutalism, which was to serve as the movement´s main reference. . The text printed here, actually only the first part of a longer article, is followed by an updated bibliography on the theme.
Pags. 130
Pags. 130
English summary
Traducción: Gina Cariño
Traducción: Gina Cariño
The corners in architecture
Ramón de la Mata Gorostizaga
Ramón de la Mata Gorostizaga
The Common Plan of Amsterdam. A.U.P (II)
Helma Hellinga
Helma Hellinga
Funcionalism and evolution
Theo Van Doesburg and Cornelis Van Eesteren
Rafael García
Theo Van Doesburg and Cornelis Van Eesteren
Rafael García
Theo Van Doesburg y Cornelis Van Eesteren
Three proyects for the exhibition of the L´effort Moderne Gallery of Paris
María Teresa Escaño Rodríguez
Three proyects for the exhibition of the L´effort Moderne Gallery of Paris
María Teresa Escaño Rodríguez
Berlin of stone - Green Berlin
Julius Posener
Julius Posener
The functional model and the free english architecture.
Manuel de Prada
Manuel de Prada
Egyptian art and western architecture
Fernando Vela Cossío
Fernando Vela Cossío
The common plan of Amsterdam. A.U.P (I)
Helma Hellinga
Helma Hellinga
Gerrit Rietveld
Houses after of Schroeder
Rafael García
Houses after of Schroeder
Rafael García
Gesamtkunstwerk's concept
Gabriele Bryant
Gabriele Bryant
Berlin, art and political in the Weimar's time
Berlin, the Weimar´s time. The art how consequence of a social conflict. Architecture.
José Manuel García Roig, Lionel Richards
Berlin, the Weimar´s time. The art how consequence of a social conflict. Architecture.
José Manuel García Roig, Lionel Richards
English Medieval Model
The mansion of 16th Century
Manuel de Prada
The mansion of 16th Century
Manuel de Prada
Architecture and "arqueologismo"
Fernando Vela Cossío
Fernando Vela Cossío
Restoration (From "Diccionario Razonado de Arquitectura")
Fernando Vela Cossío
Fernando Vela Cossío
Two articles of Rietveld
Understanding. New "Funcionalismo" in Architecture
Understanding. New "Funcionalismo" in Architecture
Balance and economy
Buildings of the Duiker´s second stage
Rafael García
Buildings of the Duiker´s second stage
Rafael García
The "Deutscher Werkbund": 1907-1914.
Julius Posener
Julius Posener
The landscape in the modern city
Miguel Ángel Aníbarro
Miguel Ángel Aníbarro
Holland, new objetivity
Summary of dats
Rafael García
Summary of dats
Rafael García
Three Duiker's articles
Berlage and the new objetivity. Manifest of Frank Lloyd Wright. Account of the book
Bouwen of Van Loghem
PDF
Berlage and the new objetivity. Manifest of Frank Lloyd Wright. Account of the book
Bouwen of Van Loghem
The "Deutscher Werkbund"
Essential biography
José Manuel García Roig, Peter Bruckmann
Essential biography
José Manuel García Roig, Peter Bruckmann
Peter Behrens 1868-1940
Vittorio Gregotti
Vittorio Gregotti
Two lessons of architecture
In the road to bourgeois architecture. Form and Theory in the architecture of XVIII century
Julius Posener
In the road to bourgeois architecture. Form and Theory in the architecture of XVIII century
Julius Posener
