El legado de Alejandro de la Sotacontinuidad, evolución y reinterpretación de las ideas de una Arquitectura

Abstract

The progress of architecture is based on the continuity and evolution of knowledge and ideas, on work and research methods and on the creative results. This work seeks to delve into these research and creation processes and, bearing them in mind, get to reflect on the transmission of architecture, a discipline in continuous development. Therefore, the thesis focuses on “the ways" and the ideas of Alejandro de la Sota, and in how his closest disciples collected them in their architectural careers. This analysis is supported by interviews with two close collaborators in the master's studio, Teresa Couceiro and Alicia Freire; and by a series of conversations with architects who began their professional career in De la Sota's studio and that have developed an important and renowned architectural work, such as Juan Navarro, Baldeweg, Manuel Gallego Jorreto, Víctor López Cotelo, Carlos Puente and Josep Llinás. The thesis studies the project methodology, as well as the ideology and the spatial, formal and material investigations in which Sota's works were inscribed; all of them factors that later on influenced the validity of his legacy. The various works and theoretical texts of these former disciples -today recognised masters of contemporary architecture- allow us to investigate the continuity and evolution of his design methodology, his research and, more importantly, his comprehensive vision of architecture. A shared sensitivity that is based on principles such as: attention to the user, to nature or to the place; and to his deep understanding of the role of technology, art and social and cultural changes in the evolution of architecture. The main objective of this research is the study of the formation and transmission of an architectural ideology, which has transcended modernity, serving as a bridge between the so-called Modern Movement and contemporary architecture.