Arniches y Domínguez. La Arquitectura y la Vida exhibition, opens today

Pablo Rabasco full professor of History of Art and Director General of Culture of the University of Cordoba. He has been a Principal Investigator of Research Projects of the National Plan 2010 and 2014, of the Ministry of Science and Competitiveness, on the influence of self-managed practices in the city, public space and architecture, and on habitat and architecture in the Spanish colonies in Africa.

In March of 2015 he curated the exhibition and edition of a monograph in Architecture AAP at Cornell University on the architect Martín Domínguez, a project carried out in collaboration with Martín Domínguez Ruz. In 2016 he curated the exhibition "Pueblos de Tierra" on the architecture of the National Institute of Colonization in Cordoba.

Martín Domínguez Ruz has been a collegial architect since 1985. He has lectured as an associate professor and guest lecturer at the Superior School of Architecture in Madrid, at the Polytechnic University of Lausanne and at the Federal Polytechnic University of Zurich. He has collaborated in the Quaderns magazines edited by the Official College of Architects of Barcelona and in Werk-Archithese of Zurich.

Carlos Arniches Moltó (Madrid, September 24, 1895 - Madrid, October 12, 1958) was a Spanish architect and intellectual of the Generation of '25, co-author of the La Zarzuela Hippodrome in Madrid together with Martín Domínguez, a work in which the Engineer Eduardo Torroja. He was the eldest of the children of the writer Carlos Arniches Barrera.

He studied at the Madrid School of Architecture (1911-1923). He obtained the title of architect in 1923. Working in the studio of Secundino Zuazo, where he met who would become his partner and friend, Martín Domínguez.

His first work, the studio of the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz (1923), gave a clear sample of his ideas. . That work laid the foundations of what he himself would later imply was "reasonableness". However, the reinterpretation of vernacular architecture was nothing new. His contemporaries Pikionis, Kozma or Lino followed similar lines of research and practice. With this, Arniches connected his concerns with those of the European currents and laid the foundations of Spanish expressionism – see his intervention at the Granja El Henar café, at calle de Alcalá nº 40 –, which he would refine for the rest of his life and in that the plaza as the center of Spanish life was the myth, in contrast to the mountain German.

Refinement and purity of lines marked his work for the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios (1927-1939), which commissioned him to build its new buildings: the Preparatory Section of the Instituto Escuela, the Auditorium and Library on Calle Serrano, the New Pavilion of the Residence for Young Ladies Students, the Nursery School of the School Institute and the National Foundation. In them, with very little means, he reached maximum expressiveness through impeccable technique and production.

His consolidation came when he won, in collaboration with his partner, the Contest of the New Madrid Hippodrome. The project presented reconciled sport with entertainment, using the old theme of the square as a starting point.

After the Civil War he refused to go into exile and faced the harshest professional purge. Only the support of some of his colleagues and friends allowed him to recover. In the beginning, others had to sign his works, but he never lacked clients thanks to his prestige, and he even participated in the relaunched agrarian colonization of the Dictatorship. He made two towns that are among his most complete works, undoubtedly the most important of his postwar period and with which he made clear the coherence of his work: Gévora (Badajoz) and Algallarín (Córdoba). In this final phase of his life he met some young architects, such as José Luis Fernández del Amo, with whom he would maintain a close relationship, which explains the transfer of architectural principles between both generations and the key role of Carlos Arniches as a starting point. of the Spanish Modern Movement.