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

José Soteras Mauri and Lorenzo García-Barbón played a privileged role in the hierarchy of the Barcelona architectural scene in the 50’s and 60’s. They both developed a prolific work, mostly omitted by the specialized post-francoist critics. Their public designs were mainly characterized by the expressive use of structural elements. Thus, this form generative system settles back the typological questions. It has been selected three public building works, all three were characterized by the relation in between statics, geometry and interior space. The first case of study, the XXXV Eucharistic Congress Major Altar was developed in Barcelona in 1952. This design starts a new structural experimentation process based on counterweights and tensor systems. The second case is the Barcelona Municipal Sports Arena ( 1954-1955). It was solved through a triple articulated arch system. This structural and spatial system was pragmatically developed to solve the tight construction schedule. Meanwhile, they were developing together with Francisco Mitjans the Camp Nou tribune canopy. Its structure was again characterized by a counterbalance and tensors static system. On his own, Soteras designed the San Pio x Church in the Congreso Eucarístico neighbourhood in Barcelona. This spin off work explores a nerved vault structure. Final case of study is Madrid Sports Arena ( 1955- 1960). It was built together again by Soteras and García-Barbón. This work combines all the previous structural systems, tensors, counterweights and arches. Thus, it could be detected a structural solution process of continuity and change. In an austere economic period, this defines an evolutionary sequence where form and statics geometry intertwine in a new spatial richness.

Los viajes de ida y vuelta que Bruno Taut y su esposa realizaron en su huida de la Alemania nazi hacia oriente le permitió adquirir una visión cosmopolita de la arquitectura que pudo plasmar durante su estancia en Japón en un voluminoso tratado, Architekturüberlegungen-Reflexiones sobre la arquitectura, al que luego sumaría Architekturlehre-Enseñar arquitectura.

Los viajes de ida y vuelta que se han sucedido a lo largo de la historia entre la arquitectura italiana y española han dado lugar a una prolífica correspondencia, materializada en un destacado catálogo de obras y textos. Una mirada desde Italia a la segunda mitad del siglo XX de esta consolidada relación permite destacar una serie de protagonistas cuyas aportaciones han ido determinando, década a década, capítulos claves que nos ayudan a comprender el momento de intenso diálogo que hoy en día podemos apreciar en la arquitectura contemporánea de ambos países.

La fascinación y confianza del movimiento moderno en el poder de la forma abstracta tuvo una de sus repercusiones más evidentes en el establecimiento de la “pastilla” como morfología paradigmática y síntesis de muchos de sus postulados. Más allá de la repetición del calificativo, la historiografía del término desde Espacio, tiempo y arquitectura, de Sigfred Giedion, permite descubrir distintas acepciones del mismo adaptadas a las corrientes políticas de autoridades y promotores que dieron forma a las capitales del siglo XX.

   

Between 1952 and 1976 a total of 21 vocational training institutions, known as workers’ universities, were built in Spain for workers’ children. These institutions, along with workers’ villages, constituted the most ambitious projects for compounds implemented in Spain (and Europe) in the twentieth century, in terms both of built area and the quality of the proposals involved. This article briefly describes the endeavour in general and subsequently focuses on the four workers’ universities, of which only three were actually built, designed by architects Luis Laorga and José López Zanón, for Corunna, Madrid, Huesca and Cáceres. Whilst a wide variety of approaches were adopted by the architects who authored the 21 workers’ universities built in Spain, Laorga and López Zanón’s hold particular interest due to the indivisible link between programme, form and construction. Laorga and López Zanón’s rigorous and pioneering study of the module as the key element in their designs stands out against the backdrop of the complete freedom afforded all the architects who authored these compounds. From the outset these two architects associated the conceit with the idea that informed the design, thereby contributing to the development of Spain's incipient precasting and prefabrication industries. Their ongoing pursuit of renewal is visible in the move from the fishbone enlargement at Corunna to the classroom-courtyard module used at Huesca and Cáceres and the concrete 'mushroom' devised for Madrid. That attitude was instrumental in broadening the variety of architectural schools that attempted to elbow their way into contemporary Spanish architecture, indisputably consolidating its late twentieth century brilliance.

The Martorell, Bohigas and Mackay work has been characterized by social involvement and education has been one of their main interests. Their school buildings have always attended to educational progress and have primarily reflected the transformation that school typology experienced in 50s and 60s. These architects took an active part in the school building revision by means of their designs and articles. Their work showed their wide knowledge about school buildings and also their critical, non-conformist and visionary nature. Since the beginning of xx Century, the Barcelona council had been in the vanguard of education in Europe. Their borough council did an important research work in education and founded open-air schools, summer educative centres and comprehensive schools. After Spanish Civil War, the municipal school control was transfer to the Francoist administration and educational politics were changed. However, some teachers removed from the public education founded private institutions to continue with the progressive pedagogy. Martorell, Bohigas y Mackay built some of these school buildings, which became an international reference model. According to that, the present research analyses the school work of the Catalonian office in order to establish their characteristics and contribution to the school building progress. With this purpose, their work has been put into context and their school buildings and articles have been examined. In addition, the school work of these architects has been connected with the school buildings of the international vanguard. In short, the article expects to reveal the Martorell, Bohigas and Mackay contribution to the important transformation that school building underwent in 50s and 60s.

Recent attention to the trajectory of the magazine Arquitectura between 1918 and 1936 has brought to the fore the architect Paul Linder (1897-1968) and his role in disseminating the postulates of Germany's Modern Movement in the Spanish professional scene, especially in Germanophile circles of the Madrid of those years. It may come as a surprise, then, that Linder's first rapport with Spain should have been closely linked to Catalanism. What happened was that in 1921, having finished his studies in the Bauhaus of Weimar, Linder and his friends Ernst Neufert and Kurt Löwengard went on a trip that had them covering much of the Iberian Peninsula in the course of a year. They embarked on the trip with concrete references and aims, following the trail of Gropius, who in 1907 had himself finished his studies and set off for Spain to study the architecture and crafts of the country for a whole year. In Barcelona he had come in contact with the architect Puig i Cadafalch. Thirteen years later, history repeated itself. Linder and Neufert were commissioned by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans to carry out works of Catalan Gothic architecture. In this work, the historic building of Catalan identity intermingled with redemptive visions of the crystalline cathedrals of postwar Germany.

The naval world was present in Utzon’s life from his childhood, not only for being born in a country in which the most distant point from the coast is sixty kilometres away and in which almost every family has a boat to sail at leisure time, but also because he lived so close to his father’s engineering profession, and the shipyard boisterous atmosphere. The way he pays attention to sun and horizon is inevitable as the sailor he was. This is the reason why Utzon looks curiously to the place in a broad way, looking for relations between place and architecture. Architecture was one of his passions, maybe the most powerful, but only one more. Architecture channelled the other concerns about navigation, nature, cosmos... His well known travels around the world to Mexico, USA, Morocco, Middle East and Japan, contribute to his knowledge about the importance of the place in architecture, as well as knowing cultures adaptation mechanism to the specific environment, for instance this is the case of Morocco desert cities: “ But all the building complexes that have really inspired me –the desert cities in Morocco, for example– have been pushed into position in relation to the place, and in relation to the sun. Then they take on the character that the old cities or Greek temples have” Jørn Utzon. The sun as a place element, that hasn’t been researched the Utzon’s projects, is a transcendent element in his houses. His two houses in Spain, and several built in Denmark, are oriented in an accurate way in relation to the sun. This paper explores the relationship between Jørn Utzon and the sun, through his vocation as a sailor.