Engineering in Spanish architectural journals: 1920-1936

Abstract

After the First World War, Spanish architectural culture veered signifi cantly in the wake of an acute housing shortage (prompted by mass migration from the country to the larger cities). To solve that problem, many voices called for both greater standardization and the use of concrete in the construction of inexpensive housing. Beginning in 1926 the Primo de Rivera Dictatorship furthered huge infrastructure works, but architectural journals paid scarcely any attention to the dams, airports, markets, stations and so forth that were under construction at the time. It was only when with the advent of the Republic (and a withdrawal of capital) and the Government’s fostering of large State-funded projects that architecture and engineering began to work together, postulating that the architect’s job was to be “the fantasy that works with precision”. And it was then that, for the fi rst time, both the GATEPAC’s (Group of Spanish Artists and Engineers for Architecture) bulletin and the journals edited by the Centre for Construction Exhibitions and Information created by M;ariano García Morales and the Institute for Construction and Building headed by Torroja proposed a new approach to construction.