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10 REFERENCE WORKS
What we have shared with you throughout our 10 years of existence
As a commemoration of our 10th anniversary, we want to give value to the 10 most representative works of each edition. We are proud to have opened their doors to society and to have managed to transport the magic of all these architects to the world.
Because Madrid is a city where, due to its enormous dimensions and cultural diversity, buildings have emerged that stand out as authentic architectural gems. Some of the selected buildings generated controversy at the time of their construction, but today they have become emblematic buildings of the city.
Discover the Madrid of Luis Gutiérrez Soto
García de Paredes in Madrid
José M. García de Paredes
José M. García de Paredes (Seville 1924, Madrid 1990) began, on the advice of Casto Fernández-Shaw, to study architecture, abandoning his initial vocation in the navy. He studied Exact Sciences in Seville (1941-1943) and entered the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, where he graduated in 1950 in his 100th class and received his doctorate in 1966. Professor at the ETSAM (1959-1961),
Professor at the ETSA in Seville (1976-1979) and visiting professor at the International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design at the Universities of Urbino and Siena (1978-1985).
Travel was a determining factor in his training and in his work. In 1946 he traveled to England and Ireland with the Dominican José Manuel Aguilar, director of ARA, who encouraged García de Paredes' continued interest in the relationship between architecture and the different arts. Between 1950 and 1952, he made several study trips to France, Italy, the Nordic countries, Germany and England, which left their mark on his work and on his permanent gaze abroad, both in the presence of his work in publications and in teaching, facilitated by his knowledge of English and Italian.
García de Paredes won the Gran Premio de Roma of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in 1955 and married Isabel de Falla in 1956, moving to Rome to the Spanish Academy where they lived until 1958, returning to Madrid where he established his studio.
Cultured, unhurried and silent architecture
Initially he collaborated with several architects of the "second post-war generation": Rafael de la Hoz with whom he won the National Architecture Prize in 1956 for the Aquinas College in Madrid, with Javier Carvajal he won the Gold Medal at the XI Milan Triennial in 1957 and built the Pantheon of the Spanish in Rome, and with Corrales, Molezún and Sota he collaborated in projects and competitions such as the Madrid Opera House.
After collaborations with the studios of Bretón de los Herreros street in Madrid, such as the Poblado de Almendrales in Madrid with Carvajal, Corrales and Molezún, García de Paredes built the churches of Almendrales and Belén (1964), today Stella Maris, in Málaga, the result of a personal research beyond modern canons, which began with the competition of San Esteban in Cuenca (1960).
Reason, sensitivity and restraint, as Rafael Moneo describes his work, will always be present in a cultured, unhurried and silent architecture whose objective was the people for whom it was intended.
He considered the musician Manuel de Falla his master of architecture and was, together with Isabel de Falla, the driving force behind his legacy and his current international reference archive. The Falla exhibition for the refectory of the Monasterio de San Jerónimo de Granada (1962) is the origin of the Auditorio de Granada (1978) to which he dedicated more than a decade and which expresses his convictions about the relationship between the different arts and between the architectures of different times, parallels shared with Falla's musical thought: austerity, conciseness, relationship between the new art and the past, between the artisanal and the cultured, validity of the contemporary. Both share the study and analytical prospection far from improvisations.
Technique and sensitivity combined in an architect
In the eighties, the return of the painting Guernica to Spain and its installation in the Casón del Buen Retiro (1981), together with the works he carried out for the Prado Museum where the disappeared Sala Juan de Villanueva (1984) was an extraordinary example, both cultured and responsible, of intervention in a historic building.
Since the seventies, the auditoriums and their link to music consolidate his research in musical spaces, materialized in his "Paseo por la Arquitectura de la Música" (Walk through the Architecture of Music), entry speech at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando de Madrid (1984) and in the Auditoriums built in Valencia (1987), Madrid (1988), Cuenca (1993) and Murcia (1995). In the Auditorio Nacional de Música de Madrid, José M. García de Paredes perfects a hall with extraordinary acoustics, like a musical object embedded in an austere building that has consolidated the musical life of Madrid.
A life surrounded by art
José M. García de Paredes combined a solid technical training with a sensitivity linked to other arts and his close world included architects such as José Luis Sert, Giancarlo De Carlo or Gio Ponti, musicians such as López Cobos or Halffter and artists such as José Guerrero, Eusebio Sempere or Pablo Palazuelo, with whom he collaborated in interventions in various buildings, such as the unfinished sculptures for the Auditorio de Madrid.
Some of his distinctions: Grand Prix de Rome (1955), Member of the Accademia degli Artisti e Professionisti of Rome (1957), Academy of Fine Arts of Granada (1980), Académie Européene des Sciences, des Arts et des Lettres of Paris (1982), Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando of Madrid (1984), Academy of Fine Arts of Cadiz (1986), National Academy of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires (1989). Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts (1990), Medal of Honor of the Rodriguez-Acosta Foundation (1991), Gold Medal of the City of Granada (1991) and Andalusia Prize for Architecture (1994).
ZARZUELA RACETRACK
It is one of the most exceptional works of Spanish architecture of the first third of the twentieth century, and the structure of the grandstands, with its canopies, one of the great achievements of the century worldwide. With the roof designed for the stands of the racetrack, Torroja plays with rhythm for the first time. He achieves this by changing the first design that proposed a flat roof and replacing it with cylindrical sheets that already suggested rhythm, it was a great novelty in Spanish architecture, the first of its kind in the country. The building is formed by the structure that supports the grandstands and its roof. The grandstands of the Hipódromo de La Zarzuela were declared an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC) with the category of monument in October 2009.
The interior is pure scenography. Like in a movie fiction, the organization of space, lighting and details are perfectly resolved. The characteristic curved wall generates small concavities for islands of greater privacy. The Chicote armchair is famous, with a nickel-plated steel structure manufactured by the same company that produced Mies van der Rohe's tubular steel chairs.
Castelar Building
It is really a perfect building, almost a monument. Its elevated position on the castellana is resolved with a travertine staircase that seems to be carved in a block. There are no other materials, just this stone and glass. The building represents the contemporaneity of architecture on the Madrid promenade. It has double glass cladding that makes this building a pioneer in this technique.
This building is part of a series of projects by Gutiérrez Soto that laid the foundations for the new domestic architecture. One of the curious innovations it introduces is the use of storage space in a diffuse way in all the rooms, including bathrooms and service bedrooms. It is intended to be furniture of the house, hiding the pillars and defining the spaces without the use of walls.
CIRCLE OF FINE ARTS
Its interior corresponds to the difficulty of combining the various social and administrative uses of the Círculo. It is today one of the most emblematic buildings of the Gran Vía - Alcalá axis. It was declared a national historic-artistic monument in 1981. Currently the building is considered a BIC, forming part of the so-called Paisaje de la Luz, a cultural landscape declared a World Heritage Site on July 25, 2021.
With the integral reform of the nineties, the high block towards Gran Vía was topped with a circular tower, a lighthouse that was never lit.
CEDEX, CENTER FOR HYDROGRAPHIC STUDIES
One of the most unique and charismatic buildings in Madrid. It represents one of the first attempts to propose reinforced concrete as the only construction material. It is also the first in Madrid to cover a linteled space with prestressed concrete beams with post-tensioned reinforcement with a span of 22 m, as well as one of the first in the capital of Spain to be finished in fair-faced concrete. Property of Cultural Interest 2023
WHITE TOWERS
It was a vertical city, a housing tower is unique in the world synthesizing an architectural trend such as organicism, on a concrete structure. A work of art that was considered revolutionary and thanks to which Sáenz de Oiza won the 1972 COAM Award and the 1974 European Excellence Award.
It is one of the most representative examples of Spanish rationalism. In addition, due to its architectural composition, it is considered the most representative of the great movie theaters of its time.
CULTURAL HERITAGE INSTITUTE
It is an icon ahead of its time. Built of reinforced concrete, the building is known as the Crown of Thorns, a display of architectural beauty with a trademark organic charm. The construction consists of a circle of 40 meters in radius divided into 30 main "segments" and was designated an Asset of Cultural Interest in 2001.
MARAVILLAS GYMNASIUM
De la Sota wanted to charge the space with humanity and he achieved this through the materials chosen and the combination of textures between them: wood, a metal structure that seems to annul the limits with the industrial architecture and an exterior perimeter fence that fits in with the brick facade, integrating perfectly into the area.
In a very clever game, in the section he placed the three sequences of uses: the outdoor play area at the same level of the pre-existing one; covered gym at the level of Joaquín Costa street; and classrooms, hanging over the gym, taking advantage of the beams that roof it, turning the curved shape of the inverse truss into classrooms-auditorium. Property of Cultural Interest 2019
BARCELÓ CINEMA - BARCELÓ THEATER
It stands out for its representation of naval iconography in which the facade is structured in horizontal strips and openings, with a clear influence of Spanish expressionist rationalism. Also relevant are the elements designed by the architect that are currently preserved, among others, the canopies, moldings, steel carpentry with original ironwork and railings on the facade; the stairs with railings and baseboards and ceilings with moldings on the interior; and on the roof floor the original layout of the summer cinema, with its slope and its tile pavement.
It also highlights the historical value of the Barceló Theater as an icon of the arrival of modernity in the 1930s.
Property of Cultural Interest 2023.
HEXAGON PAVILION
Winner in 1958 of the first Prize for Architecture at the Brussels Universal Exposition, this pavilion is configured by hexagons as a structural element. A year after winning this award, the building was erected in the Casa de Campo, in the fairgrounds where it would host some of the famous country fairs that, since the 50s and until the mid-70s, were held biennially or triennially.
In addition to being a reference of modular architecture, the Hexagons Pavilion is one of the milestones of Madrid's 20th century architecture, the second half of which constitutes a singular moment in terms of buildings in the Casa de Campo, declared an Asset of Cultural Interest in the category of Historic Site in 2010.
NATIONAL MUSIC AUDITORIUM
The building, with its restrained and deliberately timeless architecture, has facades of uniform rhythms that correspond to the perimeter galleries that run from one end of the building to the other, treated as a flat and continuous surface. On this base built with brick, granite and Colmenar stone, traditionally used in Madrid, the irregular volume of the concert hall is cut like a prow on the ceramic roof.
In 2013 it was awarded the Europa Nostra Prize in recognition of the preservation of European cultural heritage.
Also, the British magazine Gramophone chose the ANM as one of the best auditoriums in the world on several occasions due to its good acoustics, a recognized design and its work promoting music.
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