Spanish architecture
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Spanish architecture is the name given to the constructions made in Spain throughout time, and those by Spanish architects world-wide. The name is also applied to buildings made within its geographical limits before the constitution of Spain as a country or before this name was given to those territories (whether they were called Hispania, Al-Andalus, or formed by several Christian kingdoms), and largely depends on the historical moment. Due to historic, geographic and generational diversity, Spanish architecture has known a host of influences.
Since the first known inhabitants in the Iberian peninsula, the Iberians around 4000 BC and later on the Celtiberians <ref> A picture of a Celtiberian house in Numantia </ref>, Iberian architecture started to take shape in parallel with other architectures around the Mediterranean and others from Northern Europe.
The real development came with the arrival of the Romans, which left behind some of their most outstanding monuments in Hispania. The arrival of the Visigoths supposed a deep decadency in the techniques parallel to the rest of the former Empire. The Moorish invasion in 711 A.D. supposed a radical change for the following eight centuries and led to great advances in culture, including architecture. For example, Cordoba was established as the cultural Capital of its time under the Umayyad dynasty. Simultaneously, the Christian kingdoms gradually emerged and develloped their own styles, at first mostly isolated from the European architectural influences, and later integrated in Romanesque and Gothic streams. Mudéjar style, from the 12th to 17th centuries, was characterised by the blend of cultural influences.
Towards the end of the 15th century and before influencing Latin America with its Colonial architecture, Spain had to experience itself with the Renaissance, developed mostly by local architects. Baroque style was distinguished by its exuberant Churrigueresque decoration and was separate from later international influence. The Colonial style which has lasted for centuries still marks a deep influence in Latin America. Neoclassicism had its highlight in the work of Juan de Villanueva and his disciples.
The 19th century had two faces: the engineering efforts to achieve a new language and estructural improvements with iron and glass as the main materials, and the academical stream that first focused in the revivals and the eclecticism, and later in the interest for the regionalisms. The income of Art Nouveau supposed a irruption into the academical streams, and the figure of Gaudí introduced the 20th century architecture. International style was leaded by groups like GATEPAC. Spain is currently experiencing a contemporary architecture revolution and the Spanish architects like Rafael Moneo, Santiago Calatrava, Ricardo Bofill and many others have become a worldwide reference.
Because of its artistic relevance many architectural structures in Spain, and even portions of cities, have been designated World Heritage sites. It has the second-most sites deemed World Heritage Sites by UNESCO; only Italy has more. These are listed at List of World Heritage Sites in Europe: Spain.
[edit] Prehistory
[edit] Megalithic architecture
In the Stone Age, the most expanded megalith in the Iberian Peninsula was the dolmen. The plans of these funerary chambers used to be pseudocircles or trapezoids, formed by huge stones stuck on the ground, and others over them, forming the roof. As the typology evolved, an entrance corridor appeared, and gradually took prominence and became almost as wide as the chamber. Roofed corridors and false domes were common in the most advanced stage. The complex of Antequera contains the largest dolmens in Europe. The best preserved, the Cueva de Menga, is twenty-five metres deep and four metres high, and was built with thirty-two megaliths.
In the Bronze Age, the best preserved examples are located in the Balearic Islands, where three kinds of construction appeared: the T-shaped taula, the talayot and the naveta. The talayots were troncoconical or troncopiramidal defensive towers. They used to have a central pillar. The navetas, were constructions made of great stones and their shape was similar to a ship hull.
[edit] Iberian and Celtic architecture
The most characteristic constructions of the Celts were the Castros, walled villages usually on the top of hills or mountains. They were developed at the areas occupied by the Celts in the Duero valley and in Galicia. Examples include Las Cogotas, in Ávila and the Castro of Santa Tecla, in Pontevedra.
The houses inside the Castros are about 3.5 to 5 metres long, mostly circular with some rectangular, stone-made and with thatch roofs which rested on a wood column in the centre of the building. Their streets are somewhat regular, suggesting some form of central organization.
The towns built by the Arévacos were related to Iberian culture, and some of them reached notable urban development like Numancia. Others were more primitive and usually excavated into the rock, like Termancia.
[edit] Roman period
[edit] Urban development
The Roman conquest of Hispania, started in 218 b. C. supposed the almost complete romanization of the Iberian Peninsula. Roman culture was deeply assumed by local population: Former military camps and Iberian, Phoenician and Greek settlements were transformed in large cities where urbanization highly developed in the provinces: Emerita Augusta in the Lusitania, Corduba, Italica, Hispalis, Gades in the Baetica, Tarraco, Caesar Augusta, Asturica Augusta, Legio Septima Gemina and Lucus Augusti in the Tarraconensis were some of the most important cities, linked by a complex net of roads. The construction development includes some monuments of comparable quality to those of Rome.<ref> Chueca Goitia, Fernando. De Grecia al Islam. Seminarios y Ediciones, 1974. ISBN 84-299-0054-3 Pages 172-174, 179 DOSSAT, 2000, ISBN 84-95312-32-8 </ref>
[edit] Constructions
Civil engineering represented in imposing constructions like the Aqueduct of Segovia or Mérida (acueducto de los Milagros), in bridges like Alcántara Bridge and Mérida bridge, over Tagus River, or Cordoba bridge, over Guadalquivir River. Civil works were widely developed in Hispania under Emperor Trajan (98 a.D.-117 a.D.). Lighthouses like the still in use Hercules Tower, in La Coruña, were also built.
Ludic architecture is represented by such buildings as the theaters of Mérida, Sagunto or Tiermes, the amphi-theaters like the ones in Mérida, Italica Tarraco or Segobriga and circuses were built in Mérida, Cordoba, Toledo, Sagunto and many others.
Religious architecture also spread thougout the Peninsula, and we can quotate the temples of Cordoba, Vic, Mérida (Diana and Mars), and Talavera la Vieja, among others. The main funerary monuments are the Escipiones tower of Tarragona, the distyle of Zalamea de la Serena in Badajoz, and the Mausoleums of the Atilii family, in Sádaba and of Fabara, in Ampurias, both in Zaragoza. Arches of the Triumph can be found in Caparra (four faced), Bará and Medinaceli.
[edit] Pre-Romanesque period
The term Pre-Romanesque refers to the Christian art after the Classical Age and before Romanesque art and architecture. It cover very heterogeneous artistic displays for they were developed in different centuries and by different cultures. Spanish territory boasts a rich variety of Pre-Romanesque architecture: some of its branches, like the Asturian art reached high levels of refinement for their epoque.
[edit] Visigothic architecture
[edit] Asturian art
The kingdom of Asturias arose in 718, when the Astur tribes, rallied in assembly, decided to appoint Pelayo as their leader. Pelayo joined the local tribes and the refuged Visigoths under his command, with the intention of progressively restoring Gothic Order.
Asturian Pre-Romanesque is a singular feature in all Spain, which, while combining elements from other styles as Visigothic and local traditions, created and developed its own personality and characteristics, reaching a considerable level of refinement, not only as regards construction, but also in terms of aesthetics.
As regards its evolution, from its appearance, Asturian Pre-Romanesque followed a "stylistic sequence closely associated with the kingdom's political evolution, its stages clearly outlined". It was mainly a court architecture, and five stages are distinguished; a first period (737-791) from the reign of the king Fáfila to Vermudo I. A second stage comprises the reign of Alfonso II (791-842), entering a stage of stylistic definition. These two first stages receive the name of Pre-Ramirense. Its most important church is San Julián de los Prados, in Oviedo, with an interesting volumetry and a complex iconographical frescoes progam, related narrowly to the Roman mural paintings. The characteristic lattices and the triple window at the chevet appeared first at this stage. The Holy Chamber of the Oviedo Cathedral, San Pedro de Nora and Santa María de Bendones also belong to it.
The third period comprises the reigns of Ramiro I (842-850) and Ordoño I (850-866). It is called Ramirense and is considered the zenith of the style, due to the work of an unknown architect who brought new structural and ornamental achievements like the barrel vault, and the consistent use of transverse arches and buttresses, which made the style rather close to the structural achievements of the Romanesque two centuries later. Some writers have pointed to a unexplained Syrian influence of the rich ornamentation. In that period most of the masterpieces of the style flourished: The palace pavilions of Naranco Mountain and the church of Santa Cristina de Lena were built in that period.
The fourth period belongs to the reign of Alfonso III (866-910), where a strong Mozarab influence arrived to Asturian architecture, and the use of the horse-shoe arch expanded. A fifth and last which coincides with the transfer of the court to León, the disappearance of the kingdom of Asturias, and simultaneously, of Asturian Pre-Romanesque.
[edit] Mozarabe architecture
[edit] The architectue of Al-Andalus
[edit] The Caliphate of Cordoba
The Moorish conquest of the former Hispania by the troops of Musa ibn Nusair and Tariq ibn Ziyad, and the overthrowning of the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus, leaded to the creation of an independent Emirate by Abd ar-Rahman I, the only surviving prince who escaped from Abbasids, and established his Capital city in Cordoba. It was to become the cultural capital of Occident from 750 to 1009. The architecture built in Al-Ándalus under the Umayyads evolved from the architecture of Damascus with the addition of aesthetic achievements of local influence: the horse-shoe arch, a distinctive of Spanish Arab architecture was taken from Visigoths. Architects, artists and craftsmen came from the Orient to construct cities like Medina Azahara whose splendour couldn´t have been imagined by the European kingdoms of the era. <ref> Descriptions of Ibn Arabi, Ibn Bashkuwal, Al-Maqqari and contemporary chronists. [1](Spanish) </ref>
The most outstanding construction of the Umayyad Cordoba is the Great Mosque, built in consecutive stages by Abd ar-Rahman I, Abd ar-Rahman II, Al-Hakam II and Al-Mansur.
[edit] The Taifas
The Caliphate disappeared and was split into several small kingdoms called Taifas. Their political weakness was accompanied by a cultural retreat, and together with a quick advance of the Christian kingdoms, the taifas clung to the prestige of structures and forms of the style of Córdoba. The recession was felt in the construction techniques and in the materials, though not in the profusion of the ornamentation. The lobes of multifoil arches were multiplied and thinned, transformed in lambrequins, and all the Caliphal elements were exaggerated. Some magnificent examples of the Taifa architecture have reached our times, like the Palace of the Aljafería, in Zaragoza, or the small mosque of Bab-Mardum, in Toledo, later transformed in one of the first examples of Mudéjar architecture (Cristo de la Luz hermitage).
[edit] Almoravids and Almohads
The Almoravids irrupted from north África in Al-Andalus in 1086, and unified the taifas under their power. They developed their own architecture, but very few of it remains because of the next invassion, the Almohads, who imposed Islamic ultra-orthodoxy and destroyed almost every significative Almoravid building, together with Medina Azahara and other Caliphal constructions. Their art was extremely sober and nude, and they used brick as their main material. Their almost only superficial decoration, the sebka, is based in a grid of rhombuses. Almohads also used palm decoration, that was a plain simplification of the much more decorated Almoravid palm. As time passed, the art became slightly more decorative. The best know piece of Almohad architecture is the Giralda, the former minaret of the Mosque of Seville. Classified as Mudéjar, but immersed in the Almohad aesthetic postulates, the sinagogue of Santa María la Blanca, in Toledo, is a rare example of architectural collaboration of the three cultures of Medieval Spain.
[edit] Nasrid architecture of the Kingdom of Granada
After de dissolution of the Almohad empire, the scattered Moorish kingdoms of the south of the Peninsula were reorganized, and in 1237, the Nasrid kings established their capital city in Granada. The architecture they produced was going to be one of the richests of the Islam of all times, and it was due to the cultural heritage of the former Moorish styles of Al-Ándalus, that the Nasrids eclecticly combined, and to the close contact to the northern Christian Kingdoms. The palaces of Alhambra and the Generalife are the most outstanding constructions of the this period. The structural and ornamental elements were taken from Cordobese architecture (horse-shoe arches), from Almohads (sebka and palm decoration), but also created by them, like the prism and cylindrical capitels and mocárabe arches, in a gay combination of interior and exterior spaces, of gardening and architecture, intending to please all the senses. Unlike the Ummayad architecture, which used all the most expensive and imported material for the construction, the Nasrids used only humble materials: clay, plaster and wood, but the aesthetical outcome is full of complexity and disconcerting for the spectator: The multiplication of the decorations, the wise use of light and shadow and the incorporation of water to architecture are some of the keys of the style.<ref>Chueca Goitia, Fernando: Invariantes castizos de la Arquitectura Española. Manifiesto de la Alhambra ISBN 84-237-0459-9</ref> Epigraphy was also integrated on the walls of the different rooms, with allusive poems to the beauty of the spaces. <ref>Garcia Gomez, Emilio: Poemas árabes en los muros y fuentes de la Alhambra ISBN 84-600-4134-4 / 8460041344 Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos en Madrid </ref>
[edit] Mudéjar Style
Image:Sevilla2005Julio 015.jpg
The architecture made by the Moors, and native Andalusians who remained in Christian territory but were not converted to Christianity is called Mudéjar Style. It developed mainly from 12th to 16th centuries and was strongly influenced by Moorish taste and workmanship but constructed for the use of Christian owners. Thus, it is barely shown as a pure style: Mudejar architects frequently combined their techniques and artistic language with other styles, depending of the historical moment. So we can refer to Mudéjar, but also to Mudejar-Romanesque, Mudejar-Gothic or Mudejar-Renaissance.
The Mudéjar style, a symbiosis of techniques and ways of understanding architecture resulting from Jewish, Muslim and Christian cultures living side by side, emerged as an architectural style in the 12th century. It is characterised by the use of brick as the main material. Mudéjar did not involve the creation of new structures (unlike Gothic or Romanesque), but reinterpreting Western cultural styles through Islamic influences. The dominant geometrical character, distinctly Islamic, emerged conspicuously in the accessory crafts using cheap materials elaborately worked—tilework, brickwork, wood carving, plaster carving, and ornamental metals. Even after the Muslims were no longer employed, many of their contributions remained as an integral part of Spanish architecture.
It is accepted that the Mudéjar style was born in Sahagún [2]. Mudéjar extended to the rest of the Kingdom of León, Toledo, Ávila, Segovia, and later to Andalusia, especially Seville and Granada. The Mudéjar Rooms of the Alcázar of Seville, although classified as Mudéjar, more related to the Nasrid Alhambra than to the rest of the style, as they were created by Pedro of Castile who brought architects from Granada with very little Christian influence. Centers of Mudéjar art are found in other cities, like Toro, Cuéllar, Arévalo and Madrigal de las Altas Torres. It became highly developed in Aragon, especially in Teruel during the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, where a group of imposing Mudéjar-style towers were built. Other fine examples of Mudéjar can be found in Casa Pilatos (Seville), Santa Clara Monastery, in Tordesillas, or the churches of Toledo, one of the oldest and most outstanding Mudejar centers. Special mention deserve in that city the synagogues of Santa María la Blanca and El Tránsito, both Mudejar though not Christian.<ref> López Guzmán, Rafael. Arquitectura mudéjar. Manuales Arte Cátedra. ISBN 84-376-1801-0 </ref>
[edit] Romanesque period
Romanesque first developed in Spain in the 10th and 11th centuries and before Cluny`s influence, in Lérida, Barcelona, Tarragona and Huesca and in the Pyrenees, simultaneously with the north of Italy, into what is been called "First Romanesque" or "Lombard Romanesque". It is a very primitive style, whose characteristics are thick walls, lack of sculpture and the presence of rhythmic ornamental arches, typified by the churches in the Valle de Bohí.
The full Romanesque architecture arrived with the influence of Cluny through the Way of Saint James, that ends in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. The model of the Spanish Romanesque in the 12th century was the Cathedral of Jaca, with its characteristic apse structure and plan, and its "chess" decoration in stripes, called taqueado jaqués. As the Christian Kingdoms advanced to the South, that model spread throughout the reconquered areas with some variations. Spanish Romanesque also shows the influence of Spanish pre-romanesque styles, mainly Asturian and Mozarabic. But there is also a strong influence of Moorish architecture, so close in space, especially the vaults of Córdoba's Mosque, and the polylobulated arches. In the 13th century, some Romanesque churches alternated with the Gothic. Aragón, Navarra and Castile-Leon are some of the most dense areas of Spanish Romanesque.
[edit] The Gothic period
Gothic style started in Spain as a result of European influence in 12th century when late Romanesque alternated with few expressions of pure Gothic architecture like the Cathedral of Ávila. The High Gothic arrives with all its strength through the Way of Saint James in the 13th century, with some of the most pure classical Gothic cathedrals, with German and French influence: the cathedrals of Burgos, León and Toledo.
The most important post-13th century Gothic styles in Spain are the Levantino and Isabelline Gothic. Levantino Gothic is characterised by its structural achievements and their unification of space, with masterpieces as the La Seu (cathedral) of Palma de Mallorca, Valencia's silk market (Lonja de Valencia) or the Church of Santa María del Mar, in Barcelona.
Isabelline Gothic, made under the Catholic Kings, supposed a transition to Renaissance and is highlighted by buildings like Saint John of The Kings in Toledo or the Royal Chapel of Granada.
[edit] Renaissance
In Spain, Renaissance began to be grafted to Gothic forms in the last decades of the 15th century. The style started to spread made mainly by local architects: that is the cause of the creation of a specifically Spanish Renaissance, that brought the influence of South Italian architecture, sometimes from illuminated books and paintings, mixed with gothical tradition and local idiosincrasy. The new style is called Plateresque, because of the extremely decorated facades, that brought to the mind the decorative motifs of the intricately detailed work of silversmiths, the “Plateros”. Classical orders and candelabra motifs (a candelieri) combined freely into symmetrical wholes.
In that scenery, the Palace of Charles V by Pedro Machuca, in Granada, supposed an unexpected achievement in the most advanced Renaissance of the moment. The palace can be defined as an anticipation of the Manierism, due to its command of the classical language and its rupturist aesthetical achievements. It was constructed before the main works of Michelangelo and Palladio . Its influence was very limited, and, misunderstood, Plateresque forms imposed in the general panorama.
As decades passed, the gothical influence disappeared and the research of an orthodox classicism reached high levels. Although Plateresco is a commonly used term to define most of the architectural production of the late XV and first half of XVI, some architects acquired a more sober personal style, like Diego Siloe and Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón.
The highlight of Spanish Renaissance is represented by the Royal Monastery of El Escorial, made by Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera a much closer adherence to the art of ancient Rome was overpassed by the extremely sober style. The influence from Flanders roofs, the symbolism of the scarce decoration and the precise granite cut that established as the basis of a new style: Herreriano.
[edit] Baroque period
As Italian Baroque influences penetrated across the Pyrenees, they gradually superseded in popularity the restrained classicizing approach of Juan de Herrera, which had been in vogue since the late sixteenth century. As early as 1667, the facades of Granada Cathedral (by Alonso Cano) and Jaen Cathedral (by Eufrasio López de Rojas) suggest the artists' fluency in interpreting traditional motifs of Spanish cathedral architecture in the Baroque aesthetic idiom.
Vernacular Baroque with its roots still in Herrera and in traditional brick construction was developed in Madrid throughout the 17th century. Examples include Plaza Mayor and the Major House.
In contrast to the art of Northern Europe, the Spanish art of the period appealed to the emotions rather than seeking to please the intellect. The Churriguera family, which specialized in designing altars and retables, revolted against the sobriety of the Herreresque classicism and promoted an intricate, exaggerated, almost capricious style of surface decoration known as the Churrigueresque. Within half a century, they transformed Salamanca into an exemplary Churrigueresque city.
The evolution of the style passed through three phases. Between 1680 and 1720, the Churriguera popularized Guarini's blend of Solomonic columns and composite order, known as the "supreme order". Between 1720 and 1760, the Churrigueresque column, or estipite, in the shape of an inverted cone or obelisk, was established as a central element of ornamental decoration. The years from 1760 to 1780 saw a gradual shift of interest away from twisted movement and excessive ornamentation toward a neoclassical balance and sobriety.
Two of the most eye-catching creations of Spanish Baroque are the energetic facades of the University of Valladolid (Diego Tome, 1719) and Hospicio de San Fernando in Madrid (Pedro de Ribera, 1722), whose curvilinear extravagance seems to herald Antonio Gaudi and Art Nouveau. In this case as in many others, the design involves a play of tectonic and decorative elements with little relation to structure and function. However, Churrigueresque baroque offered some of the most impressive combinations of space and light with buildings like Granada Charterhouse, considered to be the apotheosis of Churrigueresque styles applied to interior spaces, or the Transparente of the Cathedral of Toledo, by Narciso Tomé, where sculpture and architecture are integrated to achieve notable light dramatic effects.
The Royal Palace of Madrid and the interventions of Paseo del Prado (Salón del Prado and Alcalá Doorgate) in the same city, deserve special mention. They were constructed in a sober Baroque international style, often mistaken for neoclassical, by the Bourbon kings Philip V and Charles III. The Royal Palaces of La Granja de San Ildefonso, in Segovia, and Aranjuez, in Madrid, are good examples of baroque integration of architecture and gardening, with noticeable French influence (La Granja is known as the Spanish Versailles), but with local spatial conceptions which in some ways display the heritage of the Moorish occupation.Rococo was first introduced to Spain in the (Cathedral of Murcia, west facade, 1733). The greatest practitioner of the Spanish Rococo style was a native master, Ventura Rodríguez, responsible for the dazzling interior of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in Saragossa (1750).
[edit] Spanish Colonial architecture
The combination of the Native American and Moorish decorative influences with an extremely expressive interpretation of the Churrigueresque idiom may account for the full-bodied and varied character of the Baroque in the American colonies of Spain. Even more than its Spanish counterpart, American Baroque developed as a style of stucco decoration. Twin-towered facades of many American cathedrals of the seventeenth century had medieval roots and the full-fledged Baroque did not appear until 1664, when the Jesuit shrine on Plaza des Armas in Cusco was built.
The Peruvian Baroque was particularly lush, as evidenced by the monastery of San Francisco in Lima (1673), which has a dark intricate facade sandwiched between the twin towers of local yellow stone. While the rural Baroque of the Jesuite missions (estancias) in Cordoba, Argentina followed the model of Il Gesù, provincial "mestizo" (crossbred) styles emerged in Arequipa, Potosi and La Paz. In the eighteenth century, the architects of the region turned for inspiration to the Mudejar art of medieval Spain. The late Baroque type of Peruvian facade first appears in the Church of Our Lady of La Merced, Lima (1697-1704). Similarly, the Church of La Compañia, Quito (1722-65) suggests a carved altarpiece with its richly sculpted facade and a surfeit of spiral salomónica.
To the north, the richest province of 18th-century New Spain — Mexico — produced some fantastically extravagant and visually frenetic architecture known as Mexican Churrigueresque. This ultra-Baroque approach culminates in the works of Lorenzo Rodriguez, whose masterpiece is the Sagrario Metropolitano in Mexico City (1749-69). Other fine examples of the style may be found in the remote silver-mining towns. For instance, the Sanctuary at Ocotlan (begun in 1745) is a top-notch Baroque cathedral surfaced in bright red tiles, which contrast delightfully with a plethora of compressed ornament lavishly applied to the main entrance and the slender flanking towers.
The true capital of Mexican Baroque is Puebla, where a ready supply of hand-painted glazed tiles (talavera) and vernacular gray stone led to its evolving further into a personalised and highly localised art form with a pronounced Indian flavour.
[edit] Neoclassical Style
The extremely intellectual postulates of Neoclassicicism succeeded in Spain less than the much more expressive of Baroque. Spanish Neoclassicism was spread by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, founded in 1752. The main figure was Juan de Villanueva, who adapted Burke's achievements about the sublime and the beauty to the requirements of Spanish clime and history. He built the Prado Museum, that combined three programs- an academy, an auditorium and a museum- in one building with three separated entrances. This was part of the ambitious program of Charles III, who intended to make Madrid the Capital of Art and Science. Very close to the museum, Villanueva built the Astronomical Observatory. He also designed several summer houses for the kings in El Escorial and Aranjuez and reconstructed the Major Square of Madrid, among other important works. Villanuevas´ pupils Antonio López Aguado and Isidro González Velázquez spread the Neoclassical style through the center of the country..
[edit] 19th century
[edit] Eclecticism and Regionalism
[edit] Neo-Mudéjar Style
[edit] Glass architecture
[edit] 20th century
[edit] Catalan Modernism
When the city of Barcelona was allowed to expand beyond its historic limits in the late 19th century, the resulting Eixample ("extension": larger than the old city; by Ildefons Cerdá), became the site of a burst of architectural energy. Most famous among the architects represented there is Antoni Gaudí, whose works in Barcelona and elsewhere in Catalonia, mixing traditional architectural styles with the new, were a precursor to modern architecture. Perhaps the most famous example of his work is the still-unfinished La Sagrada Familia, the largest building in the Eixample.
Other notable Catalan architects of that period include Lluís Domènech i Montaner and Josep Puig i Cadafalch.
[edit] International Style
[edit] Contemporary architecture
Architectural developments Image:Torre-agbar.jpg The Torre Agbar or Agbar Tower, is a skyscraper in Barcelona. It measures 144.4 meters (466 feet in height) and consists of a 38 stories, including 4 underground levels. Its design combines a number of different architectural concepts, resulting in a striking structure built with reinforced concrete, covered with a facade of glass, and over 4,400 window openings cut out of the structural concrete.
[edit] Architectural projects
[edit] Famous Spanish architects of the 20th Century
- Antonio Gaudí (1852-1926)
- Lluis Domenech i Montaner (1850-1923)
- Secundino Zuazo (1887-1971)
- Antonio Palacios (1874-1945)
- Casto Fernández-Shaw (1896-1978)
- Josep Lluis Sert (1902-1983)
- Josep Antoni Coderch (1913-1984)
- Luis Gutiérrez Soto (1890-1977)
- Alejandro de la Sota (1913-1996)
- Miguel Fisac (1913-2006)
- Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza (1918-2000)
- Julio Cano Lasso (1920-1996)
- Rafael Moneo (1937)
- Ricardo Bofill (1939)
- Santiago Calatrava (1951)
- Enric Miralles (1955-2000)
- Alejandro Zaera (1963)
[edit] Vernacular architecture
Due to the strong climatic and topographic differences throughout the country, the vernacular architecture shows a plentyful variety. Limestone, slate, granite, clay (cooked or not), wood, grass are used in the different regions, and also structure and distribution differ largely depending of the regional customs. Some of this constructions are houses (like cortijo, barraca, caserío, pazo, alquería), as well as the next pictured ones:
A Masía, in Castellón. Masías evolved from Roman houses. |
Material: adobe, used in Some regions of Castile and León |
[edit] Bibliography
- New Architecture in Spain (PB) - Edited and with essay by Terence Riley. ISBN 0-87070-499-0
- Carver, Norman F. Jr. (1982) Iberian Villages Portugal & Spain. Documan Press Ltd. ISBN 0-932076-03-3
- Chueca Goitia, Fernando: Historia de la arquitectura española, two volumes. Diputación de Ávila, 2001. ISBN 84-923918-7-1
- Newcomb, Rexford (1937). Spanish-Colonial Architecture in the United States. J.J. Augustin, New York. Dover Publications; Reprint edition (April 1, 1990). ISBN 0-486-26263-4
[edit] References and notes
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