Cold Call in Aravaca

I'd been going past it for weeks on the bus and it gradually drew my attention. Was it some kind of office block, an unfinished parking garage, a bunker? The stonework was impressive, and those thick overhangs!

Going back on foot for a second look one day it hit me: it's the Sobrino House! One of Javier Carvajal's seminal works of 1965-66, where he mixes Wright's Falling Water, Mies' Concrete Country House and Le Corbusier's Maison Jaoul all in one ponderous, chilly spectacle. It's one of those houses of the period that go on forever, with servants quarters, bedrooms for half-a-dozen offspring and a regal spread of living spaces, terraces and patios.

Friends tell me it's been on the market for years. Instead of the big estate with ample grounds I imagined, its crowded onto a corner lot at a busy intersection in Aravaca, north of Madrid. It looks beautifully maintained, despite some changes. How long can it survive? You can't pick it up and take it somewhere else, like one of Wright's Usonian houses. Perhaps it could work as an embassy residence, a luxury medical clinic, an exclusive mini-hotel?

Ground Floor

See also my blog entry:
Javier Carvajal, 1926 - 2013 
August 9, 2013

Photos: DC
Plan: J. Carvajal, Arquitecto, Fundación COAM, Madrid, 1996, p 32.

Javier Carvajal, 1926 - 2013

Business School, Barcelona, 1961. Wikicommons & U. of Navarra

I am behind on news stories that haven't made the jump between Spanish and English readers. The most important was the death last June 14th in Madrid of architect Javier Carvajal at the age of 87.

Carvajal was a key figure in the revival of modern architecture in Spain in the 1950s and 60s. He was an important model for the more abstract formalist work of many Spanish architects today - especially among those who share his conservative politics and religious values. His identification with the Franco regime in the tumultuous 1970s, in positions of power such as director of the Barcelona School of Architecture and the Madrid College of Architects, cost him dearly in later years.

Emblematic works include:

•  Residential tower, Plaza de Cristo Rey, Madrid, 1954-58, with Rafael García de Castro (seen in the classic comic movie Los Tramposos of 1959, with Tony LeBlanc).
• Business School, University of Barcelona, 1955-61, with García de Castro.
• Pantheon to the Spanish Dead, Rome, 1957, with his brilliant contemporary, José María García de Paredes, a prelude to his stark, expressionist, abstract style of the 1960s.
• Church of Our Lady of the Angels, Vitoria, 1958-60, also with García de Paredes.
• Directed Settlement of Almendrales, Madrid, 1958-64, with García de Paredes, José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún. Pioneering public housing.
• Spanish Pavilion, New York World's Fair, 1964.
• A series of houses in northern Madrid in the 1960s, exemplified by his own house in Somosaguas,1964-65, where his expressionist style came into over-ripe maturity. It was the setting for Carlos Saura's claustraphobic 1969 movie La Madriguera.
• Valencia Tower, Madrid, 1968-72, which provoked protests for intruding on views of the Retiro Park and the Puerta de Alcalá.  

Garcia-Valdecasas House, Somosaguas, 1965. Photo ©Jorge Losada

The story in the press:

• Ana Marcos, "Muere el arquitecto español Javier Carvajal a los 87 años", El País, June 14, 2013
• Luis Alemany, "Muere Javier Carvajal, arquitecto clave en la segunda mitad del XX", El Mundo, June 14, 2013
• Alberto Campo Baeza, "Ha muerto Javier Carvajal", Reprint of article "Belleza Precisa", Arquitectura Viva 147, 2012

Other interesting web pages:

• Photos of late work by Jorge Losada 
• Tallermuse blog: photos by Javier Villa, coll-barreu-arquitectos, Ekain Jiménez Valencia, Garikoitz Estornés and others, with texts and list of works on blog. All the photos below come from this source.

This and below, Carvajal House, Somosaguas 1965

 

Sobrino House, Aravaca 1966

El País: The Organicists Return

 Nieto & Sobejano

Andalusian Space for Contemporary Creation

Córdoba

© Roland Hable

Last Saturday, Babelia, the weekend cultural supplement of El País, published my article on the New Organicism. I have scanned the page, which can be found on my webpage here.

New Organicism is a movement in recent Spanish architecture that returns to some of the strategies of the first organicist architects of the 1950s and 60s, inspired in the writings of Bruno Zevi and the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and Alvar Aalto. This was the Spanish equivalent to the New Brutalists in England and Team X.

As in previous articles in The Architectural Review, Bauwelt and the French journal Archicréé, I use Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano's Andalusian Space for Contemporary Creation to introduce this movement, and I cite other examples such as Mansilla & Tuñón's MUSAC Museum in León.

Cellular scheme of MUSAC. Courtesy of Mansilla & Tuñón

Model with cellular central galleries. Courtesy of Nieto & Sobejano

From the article:

"El organicismo nació en los años cincuenta del siglo pasado, casi a la vez que el resurgimiento del racionalismo ortodoxo, y entró en su plenitud con la expansión económica de los años sesenta. Mientras los racionalistas miraban hacía el rigor técnico y la abstracción espacial de Mies van der Rohe (Francisco J. Sáenz de Oiza en las viviendas en hilera de Entrevías), el organicismo surgió como una opción más barroca. Tomaba sus modelos espaciales de la naturaleza, substituyendo un concepto del espacio universal y uniforme por respuestas locales y particulares. Su teórico fue el italiano Bruno Zevi y sus modelos, las arquitecturas de Frank Lloyd Wright y Alvar Aalto. El concepto orgánico del espacio es frecuentemente celular, entrecruzando repetidas unidades geométricas en un tejido (la colmena de células hexagonales del Pabellón Español en la Exposición de Bruselas de 1958, de José A. Corrales y Ramón Vázquez Molezún) o en una flor (la Corona de Espinas de Fernando Higueras) o en el tronco fibroso de un árbol (las Torres Blancas de Oiza). Si el racionalismo se basa en líneas y planos, el organicismo encontró su estructura compositiva en la combinación geométrica de patrones repetitivos."

El nuevo organicismo
The New Organicism. Works by Nieto & Sobejano and others
El País, Saturday, July 27, 2013, Babelia, page 15


See also:
Concrete Arabesque
The Architectural Review, March 2013, pages 62 - 73

Grosse Fassaden
Bauwelt 14.13, April 12, 2013, pages 16 - 25, cover

Retour à l'organique
Archi Créé 361-362
June-July-August 2013, pages 168 - 175

Reprieve for Maspalomas

© Lluis Casals

The Cabildo, the island government of Gran Canaria, has suspended the demolition permit for José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún's historic Maspalomas Oasis Hotel (see blog entry of Jan. 12, 2013).

The hotel closed its doors on April 31 in preparation for the demolition, and the owners planned an inversion of 46 million euros.

The move opens the door to a possible process of negotiation between local authorities and the owners that could lead to the restoration of the hotel, according to local architect and historian José Antonio Sosa, with whom I spoke in a telephone interview.

The Cabildo did not extend historic protection to the hotel building, but rather to the entire area around it, encompassing various other buildings and landscape features such as the virgin grove of palms and lush gardens that give the hotel its name. The Cabildo justified its decision citing the historic value of the site, which was where Christopher Columbus anchored in 1502 to gather provisions on his fourth voyage to the Americas.

The move automatically suspends the existing demolition permit and requires the hotel owners to submit any plans for the building to the Cabildo for approval. For its part, the Cabildo will develop a special master plan for the area, a spokesman told the press (El Diario Montanés, April 30, 2013).

Sosa explains that a decision protecting the building itself would have legally hampered the owners in any effort to update facilities such as kitchens and services during a restoration. Preservation legislation here is designed for protecting traditional historic monuments such as cathedrals and palaces, he says. He explains the protection of the landscape encompassing the hotel as a maneuver to accommodate the negotiation process.

Directing protection to the landscape revindicates Corrales and Molezún's original intentions, as their design breaks the building into a series of linked pavilions that are integrated with their unique surroundings.

Update 01.18.17

The Supreme Court of the Canary Islands  upholds decision protecting Maspalomas against appeals by local town council and hotel owners against lower court decision: 

El TSJC ratifica la sentencia que impide a RIU demoler elhotel Oasis y construir uno nuevo 

Canarias Ahora

12.15.2016