Antonio Palacios, architect of Madrid

Hospital Laborers in the Maudes street of the capital, is 100 years old and the Community of Madrid pays tribute to its architect, Antonio Palacios as a symbol of the architecture of the city. Among his works are the Palazuelo Commercial House (1919-1921), the building Matesanz (1919-1923), the Hotel Avenida (1921-1924) and the late Hotel Florida (1922-1924).

The Community of Madrid, through the Directorate General for Cultural Promotion has organized an extensive program of activities between the months of June and December which pays tribute to Antonio Palacios, one of the most representative figures of the Madrid twentieth century architecture.

The old Hospital of Laborers, located in the Maudes street of the capital and whose construction will be one hundred years has been the place chosen to present the program.

Has highlighted the value of Palacios as head of authentic "architectural icons that have become the image of Madrid and own identity" .It added that, with this initiative, the Community wants to contribute to value the architectural heritage that is part of Madrid's culture, "heritage that lingers in our memory and our collective identity forms to recognize and feel Madrid".

Activities 'Antonio Palacios, architect of Madrid', from which can enjoy in total more than 8,000 people, program a series of lectures and a program of outdoor concerts visits, and are carried out with the collaboration of Spanish Cultural action, the Cervantes Institute, the Fine Arts Circle, the Ministry of Transport, Housing and Infrastructure and the city of Madrid.

In total 249 visits, free of charge, which will be guided by specialists in architecture and art history will be organized. To participate in this initiative, which will take place between June and December, and that 6,200 people will enjoy, prior registration is required on the web www.antoniopalacios.es.

Along with the guided tours, the website will offer themed itineraries that will meet the main lines of architectural production of Antonio Palacios: housing, commercial buildings, industry and transport, so that users will have the textual and graphical information needed to enjoy the work of architect.

LECTURE SERIES

Also during the months of October and November a conference program in the four buildings mentioned above and the headquarters of the Office of Culture and Tourism of the Community of Madrid located at number 31 Calle Alcalá will add them, also buildings of Antonio Palacios.

Architects and historians specialists in the figure of Antonio Palacios and his work will deepen, Tuesday, October and November, in significant aspects of the design and production of the Galician architect, as well as recent conservation projects and value of their buildings more unique. Attendance at the conference is free until full capacity.

CONCERTS

Moreover, during the month of July a series of outdoor concerts in the courtyard of the old Hospital of day laborers will be offered. These musical evenings, held the evening of Friday, played pieces of contemporary music to Antonio Palacios, transporting the viewer into the Madrid music scene of the early twentieth century.

The concerts will be held in collaboration with Spanish Cultural Action and the pieces will be performed by young musicians. To participate in this initiative prior registration is required.

With all these initiatives the Community of Madrid wants to spread the architectural legacy of Antonio Palacios, as many are who identify their work as some of Madrid's most emblematic buildings, but do not know the figure of the architect who designed them. The city established whose traces Antonio Palacios will now honors.

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Antonio PALACIOS

Antonio Palacios starts working at a historical moment characterized by political and social instability and, especially, by the disaster of 98, after which the debate between tradition and modernity intensified. The architecture of that period would be strongly influenced by currents seeking the search for national identity, looking back as the Renaissance times symbolizing the lost splendor. No wonder, therefore, that Palacios, in line with the historicist trends driven by Viollet le Duc or Rushkin during the nineteenth century, resorting to borrowed elements of Gothic, neoplateresque or the Baroque to create monumental work whose ultimate expression reaches in buildings regionalist who built in Galicia.

But it was not alien to contemporary trends such as Modernism, whose influence is present in his interest in the ornamental, the organic and the ambition to create total works of art with the addition of decorative arts, which adds the secessionist echoes Otto Wagner, who is set in his particular evolution towards functional structures and cleaning materials. All this coupled with the use of giant orders, references to international academic classicism, American architecture and the incorporation of new materials allowed Palacios achieve an integrated balance between old architectural concepts and new construction methods to create a very personal and difficult work to classify.

The architecture of Antonio Palacios is located in a transitional stage between Modernism and the Modern Movement, so some of the followers of this current doubted not calling him a megalomaniac, monumentalista and formalistic. However, after the sculptural appearance of many of its buildings, Palacios somewhat he anticipated rationalism by emphasizing a functional distribution of space. While it is true that his works manifest a desire to transcend, we must not forget that were designed to adapt and integrate into an environment official and monumental as the Madrid of the early twentieth century character.

Nevertheless, Antonio Palacios left an extraordinary legacy consists of the most significant and monumental buildings of modern Madrid. A set of buildings that contributed to modify its urban profile and today, unrelated to any architectural movement, remain in the collective memory with the city's key landmarks such as the Royal Palace, Plaza Mayor and the Basilica of San Francisco el Grande.