The article narrates the origin of one of the project strategies that modernity brought: the functional diagram. For this, it examines the moment in which the pioneers veered from their early abstract formal experiments towards more functionalist and objective positions based on the program and the construction, not in the form. Specifically, the discourse explores the development of the architectural type of the skyscraper because it is a clear example of those experiences. In fact, the skyscraper -as a type- and the diagram -as a strategy-, share a similar historical and cultural trajectory: both were invented in the U.S., then they were reformulated by the soviet and European avant-garde in the twenties, and finally they were exported back to America in the thirties. The article eches these vicissitudes, and finishes with an explanation of the PSFS tower as a climax: designed by an American architect and an European architect, this building is the first skyscraper of the second generation built in America and represents one of the first clear examples in which was used the diagram as a formal strategy.
Built in Ville Radieuse’s conditions —as Le Corbusier used to say—, Porte Molitor has been ever considered the corbuserian habitat for excellence. This has darked another place where he lived for 17 long and fertile years: the appartament besides Saint Germain, where he resides between 1917 and 1934. It is the unknown habitat: the maison cachée of Le Corbusier. This paper tries to analyse this hide home on the double aspect of habitat and inhabit. To discover the place and the space where Le Corbusier lived and the way he lived in, looking this maison cachée as an antecedent of the radieuse living.
Labour Universities were born with the aim of educating and preparing new generations of workers for the industrial development that began in Spain in the fifties. They would become a group of twenty-one Centers located all over the country, promoted by the Government and designed by architects chosen among the most prestigious national figures of the time, spreading their construction from 1945 through 1976. In all the projects, the empty space stands out for its structuring value either as a square or courtyard of defined edges, or as an esplanade or as an open or half-open courtyard, or as interstices that relate some buildings to each other.
Due to the finding of new documentary material, I prove the authorship of Jorge Oteiza of the relief located in the upper slab of the ground floor of his house in Irún, which was unknown until now. I delve into the relation of the sculptor with the architecture in three aspects: the application of spatial concepts that has previously discovered in the sculpture; the specific proposal of a way for joining art and architecture; and I can state that this is the first work where Oteiza puts forward a direct relation with the urban space and its inhabitant.
Influence of Eastern architecture on Fisac’s work has been reiteratedly stated. The aim of this paper is to take a deeper look into this permeation, searching for evidence of the use of Taoist Aesthetics in the courtyard of his house in Cerro del Aire, which has been remodeled over time. The elements of the courtyard —plants, stones and a pond— are perceptually analysed; it is shown how Fisac uses them to materialize Tao Principles: Empathy, Life pace, Reluctance and Emptiness.
The article focuses on contemporary Swiss scene, and presents several examples of how atmospheric essence is visually expressed in architectural design. The text structure considers the relationship between atmosphere and other variables: the place, the human scale, light and air. Among the architects covered are Herzog and de Meuron, Peter Zumthor, Christian Kerez, Gigon and Guyer, Miroslav Šik and Philippe Rahm. Two approaches can be identified: an abstract and diagrammatic, and a realistic. What matters, in both cases, is the ability to evoke the experience of the designed architecture.
Between 1954 and 1962, the company Astilleros y Talleres del Noroeste (Astano), located in the Ria de Ferrol, goes from being a small bank shipyard to become a reference in the world market. During that period they were lifting a set of facilities to house the different phases of the shipbuilding process, based on a clear functional organization, looking for a bright and optimized workspace and using the most advanced construction techniques. The result can be understood today as an example of the recovery of modernity in twentieth-century Galician architecture.
This article aims to bring to light the names of the first group of architects of the Civil Guard that, since the Spanish Republic and during the Franco regime, consolidated the typological conformation of the barracks. This state initiative was based in several architectural models that, over the years, were customized by each architect, producing an interesting range of solutions. There is a lack of historical importance around this group and its production, although they represent one of the greatest structural impulses in the history of the Corps.
Miguel Fisac was interviewed in 1998 which was relevant to the centenary of his birth and coincides with his partner Alejandro de la Sota. Throughout the interview Fisac shows us some unknown information about their personal and professional relationship. He also reveals other interesting things like his professional beginnings, evolution, his forecast for the architecture of the third millennium and also his decision not to teach.
The sinuous surfaces of the church of San Paolo offer a double-sided. Inland, respond to the articulation of the liturgical action, outwards are inserted into the weft green suburban landscape, at the boundary between the city and the rural context. Liturgical space and external environment provide therefore a strong dynamic relationship: a physical map (volumetric reciprocity between the concave and convex walls), but above all a visual and lightly correspondence, due to the polychrome glass windows that allow a dialectic always different between the marble volumes of liturgical poles, white surfaces that host and colored lights that bathes them.
