Technology, materials and space: Processes of modernization of spanish post-civil war architecture. High School, Málaga. Architect: Miguel Fisac

Abstract

Miguel Fisac’s career spans the twentieth century Spanish architecture (b.1913-d.2006) and mirrors the complexity characterising the search for modernity in a regime concerned with reclaiming an academicism in order to convey the clichés of nationalism. Challenging official architecture, the High School and School of Commerce in Malaga, with its succession of concrete porticoes, his technical use of light and the humanized space of its patios, exemplifies this stake in modern architecture as a field for technological experimentation. The documentation discloses an added value to this work, revealing that there had been two proposals. This article compares these, contrasting the actual building to the monumentality and the symmetry of the first proposal, corroborating a major shift that took place in Spanish post-war architecture. Fisac introduced a new educational architecture into the Andalusian landscape of the mid-twentieth century. Deeply deteriorated, this research seeks to establish its value by means of a rigorous process of documentation.