Telefónica built three telephone exchanges in Galicia between 1928 and 1930 to house the equipment of the new automatic network. They were designed by José María de la Vega Samper that has been very influential in the development of this kind of architecture in Spain. Central offices are industrial buildings that hide their nature. This paper explains how they followed the set of design principles that were common in the American telephone architecture but unusual in Europe.
With the constitution of II Spanish Republic the State understood that education was essential to lay down democracy, and consequently it undertook improvements in education that also influenced in the way school architecture was conceived according to services of a greater social importance and spaces related to more active pedagogical ideas. The result of this educative policy in Bilbao was the construction of a municipal school group that gave form to a new way to understand school, according to an equally modern architecture, that pointed out the model followed by other initiatives.
Institutional architecture has a fundamental role in the process of the recovery of the modernity in Galicia, since it involves the integration of modern principles with a sense of collective identity. The Casas Sindicales in Lugo and Betanzos (1959-1961), designed by Rodolfo Ucha Donate are two of the earliest and materialized examples of this process, where the institution obtains an architectural approach that serves to the constructive and methodological aspects of its time, while collects invariants of Galician vernacular architecture.
This article tries to convey the architectural experience gained through the construction of the rammed earth walls of the new Municipal Indoor swimming pool in Toro (Zamora – Spain). From compositional and spatial matters to technical questions, the text describes the solutions used in the construction of the pool enclosure, such as the post-tensioned walls. It continues with a description of the problems found to finally, proposes a number of actions to consider in similar constructions.
This article, based on an architectural position, proposes a technical solution of the formal requirements of a rain screen wall on a specific project, and describes the process of research made for its verification and construction. The solution was subsequently proved in other buildings in order to develop an alternative solution to stone mechanical anchoring.
This work describes the advancements made in the development of models of numerical analysis, combining Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and programming to exchange information between different applications. This allows improvements in the process, given specific tools can be used to optimize each phase. This approach has been especially useful in studies of stability performed on historical buildings. In these cases it is extremely difficult to develop a model given its complexity if only conventional preprocessing tools are to be used.
Las Condes church (1962/64) was projected by benedictine monks Martín Correa and Gabriel Guarda. It is a paradigmatic work in Latin American architecture, and also the first modern building declared National Monument in Chile (1981). It has recently been awarded “Obra Bicentenario” prize (2009). Here are presented the main ideas, from the point of view of one of its authors, that leaded this work as a model for architectural comprehension of contemporary liturgy requirements.
Interview with the Galician architect Andrés Fernández-Albalat Lois, pointing out the origins of the School of Architecture of A Coruña and the evolution of teaching in Architecture from its formative stage in the School of Architecture of Madrid in the fifties to the present. Reflections on the graphic representation, contemporary architecture and the actual situation of young architects.
Nowadays most of the architect’s eff orts are focused on making real urban refurbishment. In this context, Francesc Muñoz, and Andrés Jaque argue that in the daily fact of living there is a submerged reality that should not be skipped. Th is reality, difficult to quantify, emerges from aspects such as citizenship practices, the economic context or international policies, and determines the success or failure of an urban initiative. The dialogue here presented shows under different languages of expression, that the role adopted by the architect today must be such political as scientific.
