From the industrial container to the cube that works

Presence and concealment of technique in the architecture of Alejandro de la Sota

Abstract

This article proposes a survey of the work of Alejandro de la Sota (1913-1996), master and pioneer of modern Spanish architecture, focused on considering the technique as the foundation of architectural form throughout his professional career. For this purpose, original documents preserved in the archives of the Alejandro de la Sota Foundation, some of them unpublished, have been studied, selecting a series of representative projects that allow us to understand this evolution. While the second half of the 1950s and the 1960s were characterised by the construction of large industrial containers, where technical resources were explicitly displayed, from the 1970s onwards these gave way to functional cubes, reflecting a progressive renunciation to base the visual appearance of architecture on the manifestation of technological means. This concealment of technology is possible thanks to the universalisation of solutions and the adoption of increasingly advanced, flexible and lightweight construction systems, in line with their availability on the market. The result, evident in his latest projects, is an architecture that aspires to dissolve into the environment, altering the space as little as possible to make it habitable, and in which the effort saved through the efficient use of technology is invested in minimising the suffering involved in construction and in favouring wellbeing.