Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The Spanish architectural scene during the 1920s is not too remarkable. The isolation and cultural backwardness, far from promoting the search of innovative solutions of other European countries, continued to insist upon the idea sketched towards the end of the 19th century on the need to deepen in the essence of the Spanish spirit, aiming to produce a true nacional architecture.

With the idea of contextualizing architectural concerns in a broader and more complex environment, the present text aims to offer a reflection on infrastructures in the city as agents which both produce and alter the urban landscape. We are especially interested in underground infrastructures, the spatial conditions and experience of which are distorted by the fact that they must be dug out of the earth, which directly affects the way they function, as well as the way in which they are perceived and understood as architecture.

Picasso’s 1924 “Mandoline and Guitar” [fig. 1] depicts a wall-papered room with an open window. In front of the window is a table. On the table is a bowl of fruit and two musical instruments. The painting is the last in a series of paintings that Picasso began in 1919 with the gouache “Still-Life in Front of a Window at St. Raphaël”. [fig. 2] Each painting in the series depicts the same room, and each is a modification of the painting done before it. That is to say, in this series, Picasso does not paint from ‘real life’; he paints a painting of a painting. He re-presents representation.

For centuries, the coliseum has been a mandatory reference for painters and architects, who have drawn it and painted it intensively, attracted by the various values it represents; depending on their training, every artist has searched for different aspects of the amphitheater.

The oldest published photograph of the house shows a truck on the site, occupying the place of the house, taking its place, anticipating it. The windshield happens to lie exactly where a glass facade will terminate the building. The steel frame of the house is being assembled from a crane on the back of the truck as it steadily moves down the narrow site carved out between a steep hillside and a row of eucalyptus trees. It is said that this process took only a day and a half.

   

The International Congress entitled La arquitectura norteamericana, motor y espejo de la arquitectura española en el arranque de la modernidad (1940-1965) [North American Architecture, a Driving Force and Reflection of Spanish Architecture at the Beginning of Modernity (1940-1965)], held in Pamplona from 15-17 March 2006, served a dual purpose: it revealed that a considerable part of the American influence in Spain was a self-reference by clearly showing the influence of European masters living there. It likewise showed that one of the greatest influences during those first fifty years was that of Wright, who was in the vanguard of the critical revision that the modern movement was undergoing throughout the world.

It is clear that architectural criticism plays a key role in educating those people unfamiliar with the subject matter, although its representation in the press remains scarce as yet. Recent studies carried out in the United States focus on the role of architectural criticism in the country, and it seems that some of the characteristics present there are not so far removed from those occurring within this field in Latin America, albeit with nuances and slight differences. According to the report, drawn up by the National Program for Artistic Journalism at the University of Columbia, less than one third of the 140 newspapers analyzed in the study (with a circulation of more than 75,000) include architecture critics in their pages, and among those that do, only a third of them are dedicated full time to this activity. Other studies carried out by the program indicate that in newspapers, “the most scarcely covered artistic discipline is visual arts, and within this field, architecture is shown the least regard”. In a great majority of cases, architectural criticism is included within the art section. Notwithstanding, and as we have previously mentioned, much road still remains to be covered, and even if we do not take into consideration the quality of the work carried out, it is clear that criticism aimed at educating the general public is not on equal footing with that directed towards specialized professionals in the field of architecture, although between the two there exists, or should exist, a close relationship.

The career of Sir Aston Webb (1849-1930) is arguably one of the most impressive of all late-Victorian and Edwardian architects. Living in an important era in British social, political and cultural history, Webb’s career and rise to prominence paralleled one of the most exciting and transitional periods in the history of British architecture, with his course reaching its peak by achieving the rank of Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) President, the President of the Royal Academy (RA) and RIBA Town Planning Chairman. Renowned architectural historian Alastair Service (1977 and 1979) for instance, noted that regardless of the architectural ideals of the period the greatest practice in terms of the sheer volume of work or money earned was that of Webb’s, yet history has largely ignored Webb’s importance partly due to his designs lacking the stylistic creativity of many of his generation. This proposed paper therefore will thus rectify this situation through highlighting Webb’s largest work, the Queen Victoria Memorial Scheme (1901-12) –a monumental undertaking on a par with contemporary American City Beautiful projects, which with the London County Council’s Kingsway- Aldwych plan ‘Hausmannised’ the metropolis. By this means the work will also demonstrate how Webb was not merely an architect of unappreciated ability, a designer who arguably more than any other of his time helped define British civic design and town planning in practice prior to the onset of World War One in 1914.

Four years ago, Francisco Cabrero (Santander 1912-Madrid 2005) finished what would perhaps represent his greatest technical and plastic success. In 1964, while Spain was experiencing an economic and social explosion, the constructive section of the Pabellón de Cristal in Madrid depicted with absolute precision an architectural style steeped in technological ambition, which was perhaps more in accordance with the chronological age of the last third of the century than with its inherited geographical difficulties. The illustration placed two industrial-scale spaces side by side with the impartial audacity of the latest modern style, describing, for the first time in Spain, a completely novel relationship between the inner void, the structure and the skin. This outlined area also represented a contemporary understanding of air conditioning systems –reminiscent of North American building pragmatism– and finally, heralded the introduction of current market processes in set-up systems. The smooth glass and metal façade of the finished palace espoused the modern emphasis of the building, at the same time opening up to the compact and well-defined aesthetics of the turn of the century. Media coverage of the palace exhibition programming and the necessary haste with which it was built undoubtedly influenced in the contemporary and unifying triumph of the solution.