His classes were delightful as those who enjoyed him at the School of Architecture of La Coruña know. It was a bottomless pit of wisdom and bonhomie. He developed the theme of architecture and other arts... He told us that Man had known how to get music out of noise, from hunger to good cuisine, from sex to love, from construction to architecture... He was, of course, Academic of honor, of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Galicia. Like other illustrious Galician architects, De la Sota, Vázquez Molezún, López Cotelo (Galicians are also born where they want), I wanted to give emotion from the necessary, from austerity, eliminating the superfluous, saving that which tense get older. Galicians who embraced brutalism frequently, because the rain wash also constantly the English lands that saw the birth of this movement.
He told me how, by restoring the house of Rosalia de Castro (until now the most famous Rosalia), he had made a concrete slab but lined, as if it were the formwork, made of wood underneath, and then he told me, "the joists did not arrive to the wall, for constructive sincerity." Absolute containment also in the hostel of the Castillo de Monterrey in Verín, giving us a lesson in submission to the historical legacy.
He also showed us the large glazed office building in the front of galleries of La Coruña (near María Pita, in front of Julio Galán) so modern and at the same time so integrated, where he had demolished a big house with his shield, and with that he made copies into concrete, as memory. Also, surely you know it, the building based on the geometry of the circle, which is the Sargadelos factory. Very beautiful, glazed, clean that of Coca Cola of La Coruña, as a development of Mies (see in the photo how there are times when the architecture is much more modern than cars). Also the SEAT car dealership in his city.
In Santiago de Compostela it has a Church, that of San Fernando, which is like a semicircle, where the roof and directions rise and go to the altar that is the center, very much in the line of those years of Fray Coello of Portugal. He also held a convent and a school for the Piarist Fathers in La Coruña for the Passionist Fathers. He was also proud of his soccer field in San Lázaro, in Santiago. Their single-family homes struggle with unique slopes, to follow modern architecture in their volumetric approaches "Have you seen the one I put on you? It's mine, I didn't say it in class because of modesty"...- he commented later dearly.
We talked having dinner about Vaquero and Castelao plants, which he knew, of course. He made faculties such as Humanities in La Coruña, which has a sloping transparent roof that lets the light down inward, or that of Mathematics and Biology of Santiago that plays, like Castelao in Oviedo, with the formwork and waking. What unites all the architects of that time is the incredible technical training they had.
If you can, as a tribute, tour your works, or see them at least in the book “Andrés Fernández Albalat, architecture and trade” that the Navarra School of Architecture dedicated to him and remember his laughter. True intelligence is always accompanied by joy. Rest in peace.
He told me how, by restoring the house of Rosalia de Castro (until now the most famous Rosalia), he had made a concrete slab but lined, as if it were the formwork, made of wood underneath, and then he told me, "the joists did not arrive to the wall, for constructive sincerity." Absolute containment also in the hostel of the Castillo de Monterrey in Verín, giving us a lesson in submission to the historical legacy.
He also showed us the large glazed office building in the front of galleries of La Coruña (near María Pita, in front of Julio Galán) so modern and at the same time so integrated, where he had demolished a big house with his shield, and with that he made copies into concrete, as memory. Also, surely you know it, the building based on the geometry of the circle, which is the Sargadelos factory. Very beautiful, glazed, clean that of Coca Cola of La Coruña, as a development of Mies (see in the photo how there are times when the architecture is much more modern than cars). Also the SEAT car dealership in his city.
In Santiago de Compostela it has a Church, that of San Fernando, which is like a semicircle, where the roof and directions rise and go to the altar that is the center, very much in the line of those years of Fray Coello of Portugal. He also held a convent and a school for the Piarist Fathers in La Coruña for the Passionist Fathers. He was also proud of his soccer field in San Lázaro, in Santiago. Their single-family homes struggle with unique slopes, to follow modern architecture in their volumetric approaches "Have you seen the one I put on you? It's mine, I didn't say it in class because of modesty"...- he commented later dearly.
We talked having dinner about Vaquero and Castelao plants, which he knew, of course. He made faculties such as Humanities in La Coruña, which has a sloping transparent roof that lets the light down inward, or that of Mathematics and Biology of Santiago that plays, like Castelao in Oviedo, with the formwork and waking. What unites all the architects of that time is the incredible technical training they had.
If you can, as a tribute, tour your works, or see them at least in the book “Andrés Fernández Albalat, architecture and trade” that the Navarra School of Architecture dedicated to him and remember his laughter. True intelligence is always accompanied by joy. Rest in peace.
Rogelio Ruiz Fernández. December 30, 2019, one day later.
* Image above, of Andrés Fernández-Albalat Lois, on "architecture lessons / documents", nº 14. Higher Technical School of Architecture. University of Navarra. June, 2008. Presentation by Rubén A. Alcolea.
