Alejandro de la Sota: 30 years with out De la Sota: the architect’s disciples proceed their seek for the essence | Culture | EUROtoday

Víctor López Cotelo remembers nicely the primary phrases his instructor devoted to him. They made a deep impression on him and nonetheless resonate at the moment like an echo that has handed by way of a long time with out dying out. “Architecture has nothing to do with taste,” he says Alejandro de la Sota blurted out in school. “All his thoughts were summarized there: this profession consists of solving problems, it is not a question of style,” he clarifies in entrance of the board of his mentor, a hero of twentieth century Spanish structure. After having been his pupil, he started to work with him in 1972 and was a part of his studio for seven years. The similar mezzanine within the Chamberí neighborhood (Madrid) by way of which different future National Prize winners and Gold Medalists for Architecture reminiscent of Juan Navarro and Josep Llinàs later paraded. Teresa Couceiro guards right here the documentary legacy of the maestro, whose loss of life marks three a long time this Saturday.

The totally different disciples of the Pontevedra architect (1913-1996) adhered to his fact, however by way of their very own path during which they’ve encountered quite a few recognitions. Professor on the Technical University of town of Munich, the place he participated within the building of the Olympic village, López Cotelo undertook along with De la Sota a “search for the essential beyond fashions and the market.” This inventive freedom at the moment conjures up the youngest and got here at a value for the instructor, who noticed what number of of his tasks ended up being discarded. He needed to shut the studio on two events to renew his previous place as civil servant architect on the Post Office as a result of lack of commissions. Much of his work is the results of the primary public competitions that started to emerge within the sixties with the nation’s financial restoration. From the Civil Government of Tarragona and the Faculty of Mathematics of Seville to the Colegio Mayor César Carlos in Madrid.

His service report additionally contains assignments of an industrial and sports activities nature. This is the case of the Barajas aeronautical workshops, the Clesa manufacturing facility and considered one of its most refined works, the enlargement of the Maravillas School in Madrid. The establishment requested him for a gymnasium and he delivered a murals drawn with the traces of the fashionable motion. The area is constructed with metal and prestressed concrete within the basements. An progressive mixture in 1960, though De la Sota most popular to speak about mild and kids enjoying ball as its true architectural qualities. In the grasp’s previous studio, headquarters of the inspiration that bears his identify, the plans for this venture are preserved together with numerous tutorial research of worldwide profile and plenty of sketches. “In those sketches the essence was almost always already contained,” notes López Cotelo. “I gave them to you without further instructions and you developed it with the draftsmen,” he recollects.

Son of a army engineer and surveyor, De la Sota was educated in a rich surroundings and regarded devoting himself to the piano professionally. He interrupted his structure research in Republican Madrid to take sides with Franco’s facet in the course of the Civil War, an expertise he by no means spoke about. Already as an expert, he used to encompass himself with collaborators with progressive concepts and much like his atypical conception of the occupation. “He never took anything for granted when facing a project,” concedes Teresa Couceiro, director of the Alejandro de la Sota Foundation and the architect closest to the grasp and his household. “We can see it here, when he carried out the renovation of this studio. Instead of being content with the surface of the premises, he got the community of neighbors to exchange a part of the light patio to have overhead lighting and a more attractive solution,” he provides.

A pioneer within the care of the delicate documentation of twentieth century architects, the inspiration was a dedication of De la Sota’s spouse. Sara Rius supported her seven youngsters and her marriage residence with the concept that her husband may apply his occupation with absolute dedication. The establishment, which has a number of actions deliberate this yr, has rescued an unpublished decalogue by the architect on the event of the anniversary of his loss of life. The fifth level says: “Achieve a humble and sincere aesthetic based on the truthfulness of expression.” The writing reveals that “cult of simplicity” that Josep Llinàs mentions when evoking his instructor, with whom he collaborated in the course of the rehabilitation of the Civil Government of Tarragona in 1985, nearly three a long time after it was constructed. “There is rigor and austerity in his work, but I also discovered that he gave space to improvisation,” he explains by telephone from Barcelona, ​​the place he teaches lessons and has his studio arrange.

The deliveries labored for De la Sota like a rating. He used to say that he discovered extra inspiration in Beethoven’s items than in architectural magazines. When he traveled to Tarragona to oversee the rehabilitation of the Civil Government, the very first thing he did was look out on the Balcony of the Mediterranean and squint in entrance of the ocean. “He was reflective and worked with admirable independence,” Llinàs recollects about these years during which the maestro was offered with the chance to reconceptualize his personal work. The conflict he had with the civil governor of the time, the socialist Vicente Valero, is well-known, who on one event dared to grab the pencil from the architect’s palms. He had begun to attract what the brand new loos ought to seem like when De la Sota snatched it away from him once more, warning him one thing like this: “You will rule the city, but in this pencil I rule!”

Part of his work has disappeared, such because the Casa Guzmán, demolished in 2017 by the son of the primary proprietor. If De la Sota arouses extra passions than some other member of the Spanish trendy motion, it’s not as a result of he was prolific. He collected numerous sketches that by no means materialized and at the moment relaxation in his previous studio. The architect and painter Juan Navarro, one other of his disciples, emotionally describes the sketches of an urbanization of single-family houses in Alcudia (Mallorca) as “a sample of his most artistic side.” They are prototypes of a prefabricated home, however not within the method of the zebra blocks that at the moment standardize the enlargement of any metropolis with their black and white stripes. They had been conceived as constructions hidden in their very own backyard, a synthesis between nature and method. “The architecture is almost invisible from the outside. It is only manifested by the life it houses, a beautiful idea,” praises Navarro. Alejandro de la Sota’s imprint stays three a long time later. He was a pioneer, a instructor of academics who created a faculty.