Miguel Fisac

Miguel Fisac Serna (Daimiel, September 29, 1913-Madrid, May 12, 2006) was a Spanish architect, urban planner and painter.

His beginnings

Church of Fisac in Punta Umbría, Huelva

Central building of the CSIC (1943, Madrid).

Church of the Apostolic College of Dominican Fathers (1952, Valladolid).

Cloister of the Apostolic College of Dominican Fathers (1952, Valladolid).

Church of San Pedro Mártir (1960, Madrid).

Edificio Crédito y Caución (1968, Madrid).

Laboratories JORBA, The Pagoda (1967, Madrid).

The son of a pharmacist, the civil war interrupted his architecture studies in Madrid. He remained in hiding during the conflict in his hometown of Daimiel. He graduated from the Superior Technical School of Architecture in Madrid in 1942, obtaining the Superior Award. Dissatisfied with the architecture of his time, he achieved a style of great personality, in which he incorporated original structural solutions with prestressed concrete and its characteristic bone-beams.

Since its beginnings, in which it has been rejecting the rationalism of its teachers when perceiving that in them the architectural plastic does not respond to technical demands and human needs, it was influenced by the work of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, neoempiricism of the architect Erik Gunnar Asplund and Nordic organicism, experienced on his trip to Sweden in 1949. He is also interested in popular architecture, in which the reality of the landscape, the human, historical and geographical characteristics of the place merge with plastic or even technical value. He was commissioned by the Higher Council for Scientific Research to order the southern area of Colonia Los Chopos in Madrid. He remodeled the old auditorium of the Student Residence to build the new CSIC chapel. The ten years in which he works around the new buildings of this organization marks the transition that shapes his language from a sober classicism to assimilating the influence of organicism.

First works: social housing

With a social idea of architecture and creating homes for people without resources, the first competition he entered was one for minimal housing organized by the Official College of Architects of Madrid. He won it with a chain housing project with a minimum surface area and a very affordable price; they were made by teams that could work in continuation. The houses had 21 square meters and cost less than 20,000 pesetas, but even though there were three political institutions dedicated to housing, none took it seriously and the project did not come to fruition. However, Fisac continued looking for prefabricated solutions that would solve the problem.

On the other hand, it revolutionized the appearance of Spanish churches in the 1950s. Fisac was one of the first members of Opus Dei, to which he belonged for almost twenty years (from February 1936 to 1955), knowing and dealing personally with its founder, Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, with whom he crossed the Pyrenees on foot during the war Spanish civil.^{[citation required]}

Fisac himself relates it:

"The day Mons. Escrivá called me was February 27, 1936. And the day I left, September 27, 1955. The reasons, more than leaving, you could say, the reasons for having continued for so long wanting from the first day, not to have entered. It is evident that I always acted - beginning with my entry into Opus Dei - in a coercive, inadmissible manner. It is also true that my enthusiasm and my desire to collaborate gave rise to being coerced. I told Bishop Escrivá the greatest impertinence that no one in Opus Dei had said to him. But all of them referred to Art and Architecture, especially religious. Our discrepancy was so great that, during the works of the central house in Rome, Bishop Escrivá forbade me to go there. I couldn't even do it for professional reasons independent of Opus Dei. I have to accept that these discrepancies, of concept and, not only artistic, but also cultural, influenced my slow departure from the approaches, we could call theological and above all of a supernatural nature, of Opus Dei. As Opus Dei grew in size and power, it was disappearing for me as a supernatural phenomenon. In the end, the Work grew as expected, since it always had a universal vocation. Since the days when the Work was poorer and simpler, we firmly believed that it would become very important civilly and religiously. But that ended up being a machine to generate power. I did not see that I could become the Christian means of salvation for the world." After his departure from that religious institution, he declared that he had always felt uncomfortable in it, and that his departure cost him fifteen years of unemployment. In 1999, when the Madrid City Council allowed the demolition of the emblematic building of Laboratorios Jorba, known as La Pagoda, located on the highway that enters Madrid from Zaragoza, a loud controversy ensued.

Fisac himself relates it:

"I would not want to present a detailed list of the persecutions that have been proven to have occurred. I will only tell you that when I told Bishop Maximino Romero de Lema in Rome, he told me that he would talk about it with Álvaro Portillo, since he used to see him in a Holy See Commission, but that he would be better than me before, tell Álvaro directly. So I did it. I phoned him, he told me to go see him that same afternoon. He promised to resolve the issue and he made an appointment for me the next day. And when I returned, he explained to me that he had phoned Florencio Sánchez Bella to ask him to go talk to him, and that he had given the order that I should not be persecuted.

Following your letter, about "the pagoda", in which you remember a lecture I gave talking about it being a somewhat superficial project in my architectural career. I will tell you that in the Jorba laboratories program, the owner suggested to me that he was also interested that wherever his office, library, bar, etc. was located, there should be something that would serve as an advertisement or claim. That "pagoda" it was part of the program that had been asked of me. I could say that that tower was something superficial, but not that I didn't give it importance. In fact, architecturally, it was given importance outside of Spain; and that has been the cause of its disappearance: It was seen too much, and the new owners had not only communicated to me their idea of keeping "the pagoda", but they also asked me for permission to put "Edificio Miguel Fisac". And the sign with my name had already been put up on it, when after a few weeks they began to quickly demolish it. It seems that in the municipal offices from the beginning, and to deliver the new construction permits, they repeatedly demanded that the entire building be demolished, including "the pagoda".

With the simple vision of an outside observer, I have been able to realize that the essential concept of spirituality proper to Opus Dei: the sanctification of ordinary work, has been replaced in practice, Faith by Piety. As I have been able to verify, among other things, when reading the book by Pilar Urbano, an extraordinary writer and journalist, who by telling the truth - she does not tell all of it, of course - makes clear that worrisome concern, of taking mercy as an essential piece that even goes so far as to say the Father: "I guarantee the salvation of your soul, if you comply with the Norms." And referring to when López Rodó was made Minister: "Now you will have a lot of work, but if you do not comply with the Norms, instead of doing Opus Dei you will do Opus diaboli." Is it then that an hour of work has ceased to be an hour of prayer?

I have never rejected the full members of Opus Dei and I love them more and more. I cannot, in this letter, give you more details than I know; but I know them because I have lived them.

I am at your complete disposal to speak, with you, or with any full member of the Work who wants to speak with me.

I am morally convinced that my attitude is correct in my circumstances and in my condition as a Christian, who wants to live and die doing God's will, loving Him and loving my neighbor for Him.

If the destruction of n#34;The Pagoda#34; it serves to serve God and neighbor, bless it!"

This independent spirit made him, among other things, give up building the tallest skyscraper in Europe in Benidorm. In 1954, he received the Gold Medal of the Vienna Religious Architecture Exhibition for the realization of the church of the Seminario de Arcas Reales, of the Dominican Fathers, on the outskirts of Valladolid.

Experimentation with new materials

From 1959 he began his most restless and personal period. The material used is prestressed concrete in the form of hollow pieces that look like bones and meet the conditions of great lightness and resistance. With the independence that his already recognized professional prestige grants him, and from the autonomy of his new enclave in the house built in 1957 in Cerro del Aire (Alcobendas), where he moved after marrying Ana María on January 11, 1957. Badell Lapetra, journalist and writer (died August 7, 2014), with whom he had three children, Anaïck, Miguel and Taciana. At this stage, he began a fruitful experimental relationship with reinforced concrete, a material that he found suitable to assume its analogies on "bone-beams", prefabricated pieces that manage to solve the problem of saving large spans, controlling overhead lighting and evacuating water. of rain. He juxtaposed the forms, deconstructed the buildings, segregating them into irregular elements with a minimalist expressiveness of a new kind, a precursor of future trends, and he experimented with innovative solutions: flexible formwork with plastics and ropes for the concrete walls, glass attached to the concrete with neoprene and post-tensioned cover. Examples of these experiences are the Made pharmaceutical Laboratories and the Center for Hydrographic Studies, both in Madrid, where the tectonic coincidence between structure and specialty reaches its greatest splendor. He translated the new liturgical demands emanating from the Second Vatican Council into the personal calligraphy of curved walls and tensed surfaces that constitute his main contribution to religious architecture. As can be seen in his church projects in Escaldes (Andorra), Dominicos (Alcobendas), La Coronación (Vitoria), La Asunción and Santa Ana (Madrid), or Santa Cruz (La Coruña). His project method, synthetically based on the questions where? that? and how?, leads us to such a contemporary interest in questions about place, technique and functionality, as it results from his work now understood as a unitary, personal journey and committed to humanism. It was this that inclined him towards a proverbial pessimism, which led him to complain in his last years that "architects no longer seek people's happiness" and that "society is badly built and is headed for the abyss", and he proposed an urban formula to combat these tendencies, the convivial city, in his book La molecula urbana. Likewise, he studied popular architecture because of its adaptation to specific environments and human cultures based on a concrete way of understanding life. Angry with the present and with the profession, he affirmed that he did not like any contemporary Spanish architect.

In Madrid, in the new neighborhood of Moratalaz, he built the parish church of Santa Ana, dominated by exposed cement covering an expression of spirituality that seems to transport it to the depths of an early Christian grotto or catacomb. Another outstanding achievement is the convent of the Dominican theologate of Alcobendas, very close to Madrid. The church stands out from it, made of brick, with very discreet colored stained glass windows and where the attraction towards the altar is achieved through the convergence of its two facing areas: the one for the religious community and the one for the faithful, both narrowing towards he. The parish of Coronación, in Vitoria, presents the same intention of directing the attention of the faithful to the altar. One of the common characteristics of all his buildings is that they do not have any symmetry. The walls are arranged in a game of lines and curves; the monochrome and multicolored stained glass windows reveal the nakedness of the walls, where everything is wrapped in the most absolute sobriety.

At the end of the 1960s, he further refined his architecture, dispensed with his concern for the popular and focused his attention on the possibilities of new materials, especially prestressed concrete, an invention that he patented, and post-tensioning, testing original systems of prefabrication. Concrete was his favorite material. One of his last works was the sports center and indoor pool of La Alhóndiga in Getafe (Community of Madrid), where he used 51-meter-long beams, "the longest in Europe," he boasted. He used prestressed concrete in many of the works that bear his signature: "Concrete is the material of our time," he proclaimed. «I thought that prestressed concrete would be widely used by architects. But neither in Spain nor abroad do they work with it. However, it is engineers all over the world who use it.”

At the beginning of the 70s, he worked on the island of Fuerteventura at the Hotel Tres Islas, located in the Dunas de Corralejo natural park (municipality of La Oliva). In the urban area of Corralejo, specifically between Calle Pejín and Avenida Juan Carlos I, he designed some houses for the hotel staff that were built but not under his direction, although they retain his imprint.

In the aesthetic considerations of the Tres Islas project, Fisac writes «the landscape in which the hotel is going to be located presents some very singular plastic characteristics (...). On the other hand, the chromaticism of this landscape is of very light ochres, almost white, dotted with some stains of stones or groups of stones of intense black. The effect of the contrast that next to a rocky area, almost black, coming from a river of lava that reaches the sea, is continued with a beach several kilometers long with a very fine and light colored sand, is extraordinary. ». The architect and urban planner highlights that "... the silhouettes of the building have been studied in a special way, which are reminiscent of the surrounding dunes and mounds."

In 1984 he directed the restoration and conditioning works of the sacred convent and castle of Calatrava la Nueva, in the province of Ciudad Real. In the 1991 edition of the Contemporary Art Fair (Arco 91), held in Madrid in the month of February, he was in charge of the Conference on Architecture. Many of his solutions in prestressed concrete are patented in Spain, the United States and other countries. Some of them already exist factories that produce these prefabricated pieces. Consultant abroad on various occasions, among them, for the study of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem and the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Manila, he developed an intense cultural work in conferences and short courses on problems of architecture and urbanism, in newspaper articles, newspapers and general magazines, and in Spanish and foreign professional magazines.

Theoretical contribution and acknowledgments

He is also a student of urbanism, in his book The urban molecule (1969) he presents a rigorously original proposal for the city of the future, which he summed up in the formula Convivial City. He is also the author of the book Popular Spanish architecture and its value before the architecture of the future .

In 1942 he received the Madrid Superior Architecture Award; in 1950 she obtained the First Prize in the COAM contest for minimum housing. In 1954, he the Gold Medal at the International Exhibition of Sacred Art in Vienna. On October 2, 1994 he received the Gold Medal for Architecture. In May 1996 he presented his first painting exhibition in Madrid, with 60 works. In 1997 the Arquerías hall of the Nuevos Ministerios in Madrid hosted an exhibition on his work; That same year, on June 12, he won the VII Antonio Camuñas Architecture Award, the most important award given by a private entity in Spain in the field of architecture and that is awarded every two years. On October 4, 1999, and coinciding with World Architecture Day, he received a tribute organized by the Madrid College of Architects and the Círculo de Bellas Artes, an entity that presented him with the Medal of Honor. In October 2003 he received the National Architecture Award. In January 2004, the European University of Madrid awarded him Doctor Honoris Causa.

He died in Madrid on May 12, 2006 due to an embolism, when the College of Architects of Ciudad Real had just created a Foundation that would be in charge of cataloging all of Fisac's professional legacy and delving into the study of his work, as well as in that of modern Spanish architecture (www.fundacionfisac.com).

Miguel Fisac Foundation

The Miguel Fisac Foundation was created on November 22, 2006 when the Official College of Architects (COA) of Ciudad Real acquired the complete documentary archive of Fisac's work. From its creation until 2015, the president of the COA Demarcation, Ramón Ruiz Valdepeñas, was President of the Foundation, and since 2015 the president is Diego Peris Sánchez.

Among the activities carried out by the foundation, the Fisac archive was acquired with the commitment to manage it for its dissemination among citizens, society and to facilitate access for researchers. With these objectives, the I Miguel Fisac Symposium was held, with debates and conferences. On the occasion of the celebration of architecture week in September 2019, the studio house opened its doors to all citizens offering guided tours by the organization Open House Madrid. In the historical service of the Official College of Arquitectos de Madrid contains documentation of 6 works by Fisac carried out between 1960 and 1977.

The Foundation is headquartered in the Ciudad Real Demarcation of the Official College of Architects (c. Carlos López Bustos 3. Ciudad Real) and keeps its legacy organized and cataloged, consisting of plans of its projects, Memoirs, Historical photographs, Correspondence and Library. Its information can be accessed on the website fundacionfisac.com.

Awards

• Great Cross of the Order of Civil Merit.[1]
• Commander of the Order of Elizabeth the Catholic.
• Commander of the Order of Alfonso X el Sabio.
• Cross of the Holy Places of Jerusalem.
• In 2007 he was granted the Gold Medal of Castilla-La Mancha, a region of which he was originally a posthumous title.

Quotes

At the age of ninety, he summarized his idea of architecture in an interview:

I have come to the conclusion that technical solutions are the ones that give rise to formal solutions that may have interest, because, if not, there are forms that have a more literary origin than the very formal architectural one. I think the aesthetic problem is the last one, when other things that are priority are fulfilled in the beginning of the project. When I studied two years of exact, inside the architecture career, we gave chemistry and did some practical work: they gave us a brief with an element and we had to follow an analytical march to find out what it was. Some of that is what I do when I take care of an architecture project: to start with raising what this is for, where it is - and this the modern movement willingly wanted to forget-, how I would create the spaces that ask me in the program, that is, how to build in the most logical and economic way. With all these data already specified, there is the possibility of drawing something that could be the volumes that those spaces have created. The architecture is, as Lao Tse said, the air that remains inside. Now what we see is what we use to leave that air inside. And that can already be graphically represented and that is when you can use the possibilities in a way that you have imposed. It is what I call a "nosequé", what is this already, how I put it and I see it to do it well, assuming having a knowledge of the aesthetic that is solid enough to transmit it. That's what's called taste education, for what you have to see a lot and study a lot

(Interview in The World24 October 2003).

Main architectural works

Instituto de Edafología y Fisiología Vegetal del CSIC (1944, Madrid).

Written work

• "Centro de Investigaciones Bios", Reports of the Construction (1956), n.o 84 and "Centro de Estudios Hidrográficos, in Madrid", Reports of the Construction (1964) n.o 157". Facsimile edition in: Oteiza, I (2006) "Two works by Miguel Fisac published in Construction Reports", Construction Reports (2006) Vol. 58, n.o 503: 65-87. [3]
• The Spanish popular architecture and its value to the future. Madrid: Ateneo, 1952. Reissue 2005. Colegio de Arquitectos de Ciudad Real
• The urban molecule. A proposal for the city of the future Madrid: Spanish Editions and Publications, 1969.
• Reflections on my death. Madrid: New Utopia, 2000.
• Letter to my nephews. Ciudad Real: Colegio de Arquitectos de Ciudad Real. Fundación Miguel Fisac., 2007.

Documentaries

• Andrés Rubio: "La delirante historia de la pagoda: Miguel Fisac", premiered at the Rotterdam Architecture Festival.