"architecture is the creation of a place to use and live"
The Ministry thus recognizes the architect of O Carballiño, author of projects such as the Museum of Fine Arts of A Coruña (National Architecture Prize 1997), the Presidential Complex of Monte Pío (official residence of the president of the Xunta) or the Museum of the Pilgrimages, both in Santiago de Compostela.
"Every project is a bet to reactivate the space, through which we recover the life of the building or space and transform it into a place of use, of events." The project as a creative act makes possible the change. of modification necessary to continue life."
Manuel Gallego Jorreto. TC 118- Manuel Gallego. Arquitectura 1998- 2015
The jury, formed by Rafael Moneo Vallés (2015 National Architecture Prize), Elías Torres Tur and José Antonio Martínez Lapeña (2016 National Architecture Prize), recognizes the more than 50 years of Gallego Jorreto's professional career, the result of an "architecture" committed to its native Galicia, characterized by an honest dialogue between traditional materials, trades and modernity"... that "has developed an architecture that goes from the single-family home in small Galician towns such as Corrubedo and Oleiros" to projects "emblematic." The National Architecture Award is endowed with 60,000 euros and is promoted by the Ministry of Development.
Manuel Gallego Jorreto, moved to Madrid in 1955 to pursue an architecture degree, when Spain only had two schools. In the capital he would end up working for three years under the tutelage of another Galician, Alejandro de la Sota, in 1963. A period that would mark his way of working. In 1966 he entered the Ministry of Housing, for two decades. During the 1960s he completed his training with a scholarship in Paris in 1969-70 (along with a student scholarship in Oslo in 1962).
Gallego opened his studio in La Coruña in 1967. During these first years his clients would be his family. A trajectory that goes from the holiday home that he built in the Cabo de Corrubedo in 1970-71, in clear reference to the Sotiano constructive minimalism, to the permanent family home he made in 1977-79 in El Carballo de Oleiros, near La Coruña , where he shows an intense search for context references and a clear influence of the thought of Aldo Rossi who had visited Santiago in 1976
His later work would pass by, the holiday home and study for his friend the painter Enrique Ortiz Alonso in 1979-82, on the island of Arosa, combining his activity as an official and the classes of Urban Planning at the School of Architecture of La Coruña, until in 1987 he obtains a position as Head of the University and leaves the Provincial Planning Service of A Coruña.
His later work is characterized by showing special care with built pre-existing and careful attention to the materials used, carrying out different expansion and rehabilitation projects, such as the central building of the San Caetano Complex for the Headquarters of the Administrative Services of the Xunta de Galicia or the Museum of Fine Arts of La Coruña in the former Convent of Capuchinas.
In the 90s he was commissioned projects that he resolved from the abstraction of the project, as shown by the Research Institutes in the Campus of Santiago, the Health Center of Viveiro.
With a consolidated and brilliant trajectory in the 21st century, the Presidential Complex of Galicia arrived in Santiago, the residence of the president the Xunta, giving way to the headquarters of the same institution in Campolongo, Pontevedra and to the Museum of Pilgrimages in Santiago, a smart rehabilitation and expansion of the former headquarters of the Bank of Spain. A brilliant career that has influenced a whole generation of architects.
