IV Congress of Pioneers of Modern Spanish Architecture

In collaboration with the Ministry of Public Works, the Alejandro de la Sota Foundation will hold the IV Congress of Pioneers of Modern Spanish Architecture in May 2017, which will be entitled "Architecture as an integral work".

The deadline to participate in the congress is already open until December 14, 2006. The authors of the selected articles will participate in a discussion that will have moderators and luxury guests: Juan Navarro Baldeweg, Enrique Granell, Carmen Díez Medina and Carlos Quintans.

The concept of Gesamtkunstwerk (full artwork) has been consolidated since the end of the 19th century, starting with the first contributions of the English arts & crafts movement, which resulted in the different forms in which art nouveau was manifested in Europe and which, passing the filter of the industry that the Deutscher Werkbund advocated, ended up picking up the ideas of the Bauhaus perfectly. This modern concept was belatedly translated into a poor and industrialized Spain, which was right emerging from a war, in which certain works imbued with this spirit tried to obtain, with the scarce resources available, large doses of ingenuity and craftsmanship still alive, which a construction indsutry still poor and little developed could not supply. On numerous occasions, especially in certain types of public buildings, the architects had the freedom (or took it) to take their proposals as a whole, delivering great pieces of work to their clients, loaded with all kinds of unique elements or works in collaboration with artists. Linking with the idea of ​​the Gesamtkunstwerk, the citation to this Congress aims to promote the analysis of works in which the architect has managed to think, design and incorporate both architectonic elements as well as those belonging to other disciplines, always with the intention of building an architecture which is understood as an integral work of art.

The congress proposes the analysis of the work of architecture conceived as a whole, which does not focus on the details of construction, equipment or decorative elements incorporated later in the work, but on those essential components intrinsic and inseparable to the work itself and which are at the service of architecture as a whole. The theme of the Congress offers the opportunity to value the cultural and artistic background of this generation of architects and allow the discovery of their works from a broader and more enriching point of view.

There are numerous examples in modern Spanish architecture that reflect this concept. In much of the works carried out in this period we can see how the architect's thought take into account every scale of the piece of work including objects, furniture or other elements as an indissoluble part of them. Some of the examples that have already been analyzed in previous Congresses, such as the house of Varela by Alejandro de la Sota, can be mentioned as examples, in which the closet doors, the berths or the shutter panels form an inseparable part of the architecture itself; or the Basilica of Aránzazu by Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza, in which the sculptural work of Jorge Oteiza can not be dissociated from the work itself.