FIND OUT ABOUT
THE PIONEERS
OF SPANISH MODERN
ARCHITECTURE

The leading figures in Modern Architecture on the international scene were Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe.

However, the spread of international modern architecture in Spain began in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The German Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe, built for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition, shows us how far away the historicist, monumental architecture being produced in Spain under the Primo de Rivera dictatorship was from avant-garde architecture in Europe.

A year later, a group of architects founded GATEPAC (the Group of Spanish Artists and Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture), as the Spanish division of the ICMA (International Congress of Modern Architecture). Its main representatives included Josep Lluís Sert, Antonio Bonet, Josep Torres Clavé, Fernando García Mercadal and José Manuel Aizpurúa. Through their publication AC Documentos de Actividad Contemporánea, they spread their modern ideals and the work of the great European masters, such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Gropius, Breuer and Neutra. In this way, some of the leading buildings being constructed on the international scene began to be introduced in this country.

In 1934, a group of architects and engineers, including José María Aguirre, Modesto López Otero and Eduardo Torroja, founded the Eduardo Torroja Institute, devoted to research in the field of construction, materials, industrialisation and technical rationalism.

But in 1936 came the Civil War. This brought about a tremendous upheaval in all areas, including architecture, and the incipient modern movement was paralysed. The GATEPAC, associated with Republican ideology, was dissolved following the exile or death of many of its members. Its contributions were censored, as they were considered to be opposed to the religious and nationalist ideals upheld by Franco's regime, and they were forgotten.

At the end of the Spanish Civil War (1939) the country was completely divided. The architects who remained in Spain directed their activity towards a historicist, monumental national architecture, serving the new regime. The imperialist style that was developing in Germany and Italy, completely alien to international trends, served as an influence during this period.

The generation of young architects who graduated in the 1940s, including Miguel Fisac, Josep María Sostres, José Antonio Coderch, Alejandro de la Sota, Rafael Aburto, Francisco de Asís Cabrero, José Luis Fernández del Amo and Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza, began working professionally in the context of economic hardship and cultural isolation during the post-war period.

During these years, the political climate of the country, the academic training they received and the scarcity of resources led them to develop a historicist or traditional architecture. Their main conceptual reference at the time was popular architecture, with ethical qualities based on technical honesty, the absence of superfluous elements and integration with the environment – concepts also present in the Modern movement.

Some members of the generation of young architects began to work planning rural settlements for the National Settlement Institute, an official organisation set up in 1939 to reactivate the agrarian economy. It continued to operate until the 1970s, with high-quality buildings reflecting the development of architecture in Spain.

Coinciding with the end of World War II (1945) and towards the end of the forties came the first communications with the outside world. Young architects now had access to foreign magazines that arrived in Spain showing buildings by architects such as Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright. This had two consequences: first, they took on Modern values in an individual, intuitive and self-taught way, learning from everything new that they had not known about before. Secondly, they developed a critical stance against the historicist architecture being produced in Spain.

So, the principles of the interwar Central European Modern Architecture of the Bauhaus masters and Le Corbusier, based on rationality, universality, social commitment, functionality and formal abstraction, were assimilated. But they were enriched with new touches, such as attention to place and local tradition, or the organic relationship between form and structure typical of the American organicism of F. L. Wright or the Scandinavian empiricism of Alvar Aalto, in line with the new reinterpretations of Modern Architecture being made in different Western countries.

In 1949, José Antonio Coderch began the resurgence of truly Modern architecture in Spain with his residential building in Barceloneta, which he followed up with the Ugalde House, built two years later.

After that, the first proposals appeared in which a certain compromise between monumental academic architecture and modernity could be observed, with the influence of various foreign architectures – Scandinavian, German and Italian – operating along these lines. This was the case of the complex for the 1st Countryside Fair in Madrid (1951), by Francisco de Asís Cabrero and Jaime Ruiz; the winning design (1950) for the Basilica of Aránzazu, in Guipúzcoa, by Javier Sáenz de Oíza and Luis Laorga; and the winning proposal in the competition for the National Trade Union Office (1952) in Paseo del Prado in Madrid, by Rafael Aburto and Francisco de Asís Cabrero.

From the 1950s onwards, when the political and cultural environment became less hostile, the architects of the new generation began to express their own poetic style. But they did it individually, due to the introspective attitude they had developed during the post-war period of isolation. In their works, Modern principles evolved and were adapted in many different ways as responses to the social and cultural situation in Spain.

During these years, plans emerged to rebuild neighbourhoods destroyed during the war. At that time, the big cities were facing a real and very serious housing problem due to population growth and the exodus from rural areas. Some young architects, committed to finding solutions for this social situation, opened forums for debate on housing and the suitability of particular types and construction methods. Assemblies and competitions were held, where Modern propositions and reconstruction models deriving from the world wars resurfaced. The new social demands had to be met by making use of the technical advances of the time. The working-class neighbourhoods built on the outskirts of Madrid to solve the housing shortage, such as the planned or overspill towns, already show a full assimilation of these values.

In 1957, some of the young architects made their first collective trip to Berlin to Visit the innovative residential buildings of the 'Interbau', built by avant-garde architects like Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto, Oscar Niemeyer, Arne Jacobsen and Heinz Hossdorf, as well as works in Berlin by Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. The experience deeply marked the group of architects, as it allowed them to see at first hand the suitability of the architectural premises of the Modern masters. On their return to Spain they would try to put them into practice.

A year later, the project selected for the Spanish Pavilion at the Brussels Fair, by José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún, represents the full acceptance of Modern Architecture as the official style of the State before the international community.

Throughout the decade, some of the leading figures in the Spanish Modern movement, such as José Antonio Coderch, Jorge de Oteiza, Ramón Vázquez Molezún, José María García de Paredes, César Ortiz Echagüe, Manuel Barbero, Rafael de la Joya and Fisac, received the first international awards recognising their architectural quality.

In addition, the most important architects of the time, such as Neutra, Wright, Le Corbusier, Aalto, Gio Ponti and Sartoris, Visited Spain, giving lectures and conferences that served as a great stimulus to the new generation of architects to continue with the development of the Modern style, reinterpreting and assimilating it out of respect for Spain’s landscape and cultural values.

During the sixties, coinciding with the years of economic recovery and industrialisation of the country, the Modern style continued booming in Spain, leaving us a wide repertoire of works of unquestionable architectural quality that remain fundamental references for architecture today.

Other architects, such as Alejandro de la Sota, Rafael Leoz and Cabrero, remained faithful to Modern principles to resolve different needs effectively, based on rationality, abstraction, essentiality, and always with the candid, precise use of the available construction technologies.

In the early 1970s, the Modern movement was embroiled in a major dilemma at international level, resulting in a crisis of values and a wide diversification of positions. In Spain, the brilliant contributions of the generation of architects that emerged in the post-war period managed to update the country’s architecture in just 20 years. Most importantly, they served as a guide, lighting the way for many architects of later generations who found in these masters the solid foundations for building the Spanish architecture of today.

The pioneering architects of the Spanish modern style took on ethical, aesthetic and social leadership with passion and enthusiasm at a time of crisis and shortages. Despite working in an era when resources were in short supply, their great enthusiasm, sense of social responsibility, commitment to architecture as a profession and innovative spirit led them to write one of the most brilliant chapters in 20th-century Spanish architecture. Their writings, interviews and lectures reflect diverse but coherent ways of experiencing and thinking about a life in architecture. Ultimately, their interpretations of the discourse of modern architecture are different, but they all have a common denominator: seeing architecture as providing a useful service to society.

The result is summarised in a set of buildings considered to be masterpieces not so much for the architect who designed

them but rather the knowledge and values they transmit. A search for rigour and technical rationality based on economical use of resources; an effort to bring architecture closer to other technical disciplines; attention to all scales (from details and furnishings to integrating buildings into the surrounding landscape to create an integral work of art); ecology based on respect for nature and common sense; and functional optimisation are among the most outstanding values in the architecture of this period.

This fruitful period has left us a huge architectural legacy which we must keep alive, with magnificent works that continue to act as a great stimulus to the current generations of architects. In the context of crisis in which we now find ourselves, affecting the economy and society as well as health and architecture, we need to consider their thinking and validity and reflect on what the foundations of the role and position of architects and architecture in our society should be today. In the words of Lluís Comerón, president of CSCAE:

“The great architects of modern Spanish architecture had a commitment to quality, excellence, society, and people […] a commitment to emotion, cultural rigour and industry; and a global commitment to the best way to build and improve our environment […] that’s the best we have in order to face our future. Now we are in a time of change, and in that change there is a great opportunity in architecture. As Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, pointed out: “Just as important as knowing what’s changing is knowing what’s going to remain important over the next few years”

In short, it is a matter of looking backwards to gain forward momentum.