Daniel Zarza. Exemplary architect and urbanist

Daniel Zarza was known, before being an architect, as an exceptional artist (Premio Lazarillo 1964), among others he illustrated the book Songs and Poems for Children by Federico García Lorca / Canciones y Poemas para Niños de Federico García Lorca. A few year later, 1972 and now as an architect and urbanist, he demonstrated his social commitment.

After his academic training he collaborated with different studios. In particular, he recalled being part of the group of architects that replaced the first team that worked with Francisco Javier Saenz de Oiza to win the tower of the Banco de Bilbao, in 1972, working on it to construct this extraordinary tower. His recollection was confirmed with the one transmitted to me by Alfonso Valdés, participant in the first team.

His unpublished works and studies on Andalusian landscapes are almost an encyclopedic compilation, but as much or more than those studies are those of the peripheral landscapes, those that both he constantly showed remembering the School of Vallecas. The forgotten landscapes of the south of Madrid, those of the plasters, arid and stigmatized by the rich and green north, therefore forgotten and consigned to working class enclaves, industries and wastelands, a consequence of the incomprehensible and self-promoting policies of past Heads of Ministries over fifty years ago.

Later, with his brother as curator, they would recover the figure of the sculptor Alberto Sánchez (2010) and his surrealist sculpture project, Monumento a los pájaros / Monument to the Birds for its installation in the Almodovar hill. Few know that the work was a masterful complement to the one presented in the Spanish pavilion in Paris, with Picasso's Guernica, and his best-known work of which there is a replica on the door of the current Reina Sofía Museum, "El pueblo español tiene un camino que conduce a una estrella." The hill on which that sculpture should be installed is part of those peripheral landscapes of which Daniel Zarza talked so much, a territory of almost mythological nature. Alberto Sanchéz died in exile in 1962, in Moscow, and he was not the only bright character with a similar trajectory that interested Daniel Zarza. Forgotten modernities. Luis Lacasa was another one of those forgotten ones, about whose work he worked with Carlos Sambricio, finishing with the COAM exhibition, in 1976; "Racionalismo Madrileño Luis Lacasa, 1920 - 1939."

He collaborated in one of those urban plans that have become a reference for all Spanish urban planning, the PGOU of Madrid of 85 and formed an active part of those of Seville, Granada, Bilbao and the Plan especial de la Alhambra / Special Plan of the Alhambra.

I knew his work when I was still a student of architecture through the publication of Las Monjas Industrial Park, Madrid, 1987. An innovative model for the implementation of industrial urban policies, something that would repeat in numerous projects for productive activities, regional plans and territorial infrastructures.

Personally I met him in 2003, when I started teaching at the University of Alcalá, where he had recently won his position as professor of urban planning. It was 15 intense years of mutual work in which he conveyed to me his way of visualizing landscape and of understanding urbanism as architects, not only planners subjected to the visions of engineers and lawyers. The vision of the architect to build a city was one of the points on which we agreed and with that and other coincidences we presented several contests, some of them won as the renovation of the Gran Vía in 2010 (not carried out due to the crisis and politicians intimidated by "architects'." I never understood why propose a contest that was not wanted to be done). Some of the ideas that we proposed are actually being carried out today in the Gran Vía in Madrid. To celebrate its centenary, Daniel collaborated in the documentary, Gran Vía, on the capital's best know avenue with his brother, Rafael Zarza.

Other projects in which we also participate, some awarded and others less fortunate, were the incredible proposal for the "Parque de Valdebebas" or the "Reforma del Río Segura on its way through Beniel". A process of collaboration and work that also continued in the School of Architecture of the University of Alcalá. Working in close collaboration that resulted in mutual exchanges and discussions, I benefited most from being able to learn a different vision of the landscape, which he so brilliantly knew and transmitted.

His way of teaching was always an opportunity to learn. His handling of theoretical discourse accompanied by an tool that already seems archaic, but that he mastered with mastery and genius, were the drawings on the blackboard made with chalk to explain, synthesize the ideas, summarize in a scheme a complex thought process. 

His commitment was always with direct intelligence, the one that knows how to reach everyone, without words that hide, without versallesque adornments.

Over the years we became friends, we shared many ideas, projects, talks, debates, discussions and conversations. This last two years were an unfair period for a brilliant career with architecture, urbanism and landscape culture, but especially for his person. Two hard years, which make us remember more strongly the value of ethical and professional commitment, something that is not always sufficiently valued and yet so necessary, basic and exemplary.

Azores, October 2018. José Juan Barba