LOGGIA Nº12

Northern Arabia the patterns and repetitive devices Earth architecture ENGLISH VERSION applied by tribesmen to their woodwork and to the mud Strong in compression and weak in tension, massive by which coats their buildings has a quality which makes nature and generally heavy, earths and brick are, with them unique in time and place; and in that sense they stone, the characteristic material of walling. Being inert John Warren are as important as the great terracottas displayed on in a practical, if not a chemical sense, they are durable Form, Meaning and Purpose: Italian Renaissance buildings. The culture is and take on special hues and characteristics with age. Ethical and Aesthetic Objectives in commemorated in the artefact, and the qualities of the The methods of assembly – bonding – and forms of the Conservation of Earth Buildings society that created a civilization are measured in the construction have produced a wide variety of historic architecture left behind as much as in their literature or characteristics intrinsic are appropriate to the context Conservation serves several purposes. In the social their music. Societies may disappear but the cultural and produce a result that is acceptable in terms of the context, the fabric of mans built past is meaningful to artefact remains to provide a direct access to those who historic qualities of the place or building. him in same fundamental way as the landscape he created it. If man’s earliest constructions were of mud simply piled inhabits, and people deprived of the environmental asset The very rarity of some fragments of past societies may together and dressed into an homogeneous mass the of their past lack a part of the understanding of their in itself be a special reason for, and give a particular next step was to provide for the use of hardened mud, own history. The sense of loss can be tangible, resulting purpose to, conservation. The city of Bokhara in easier to transport, to be laid in place and joined with a in instability and a yearning for environmental security. Uzbekistan preserves a mausoleum with an wetter mud. So the first mortar was created. Only where The distinctive shapes of the earth villages of sub- extraordinary intricacy of patterned brickwork mud is used in plastic state can a mortar be avoided, so Sahara Africa provide their inhabitants with evidence of attributable to the tenth century King, Ismail the the form of a masonry structure from earliest times has their origins in just the same way as do the mellow Samanid. No other comparable building survives. Were been significantly dependent on the bonding and the brick walls of some great Spanish town whose citizens it not for this one rich example, patterned like a tribal nature of mortar used as well as the character of the sense in the environment the deep roots of their past. rug in solid brickwork, there would be almost no brick whether of mud or of burnt clay. Early bricks No conservator need be ashamed of admitting that one evidence of culture known otherwise only by were of a type known as plano-convex, that is to say fundamental purpose of his work is the retention of a fragmentary remains in poetry and literature. Rather having curved upper surfaces, being hand moulded like fabric which meets the deep psychological needs of more is known earlier Sasanian civilisation in a lump of dough. These have been exposed in the those who inherit it and pass it on. Mesopotamia but of Sasanian building skills the one excavations of the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates valleys The primary objective in consolidating or strengthening structure that gives measure to their achievement is the in buildings dating back several millenia but these and structures is to improve their stability. Where a visible great parabolic brick vault standing today at Salman many other forms of unbaked earth bricks have been intervention is called for, as is usually yhe case, a series Pak, south of Baghdad. This single remaining structure covered with mud or render as an external coating so of questions is raised. These lie outside the structural of the great palace of Chosroes Anushirvan at Ctisphon that the intrinsic nature of the wall structure will have problem itself. It is these that we now seek to explore. is the single building by which the structure been concealed from the outset. It is the nature of mud Structurally the strength of the building and probably achievement of that world power can now be assessed. brick construction to be rendered over with a mud also its longevity will have been enhanced. The These arguments of purpose are historical and to them plaster and the quality that arises in earth structures, intervention must raise ethical considerations which by must be added one other – science. Any historic fabric therefore, is that of a superficial layer or coating definition relate to the rightness of the action and the is evidence of the circumstances and techniques of its designed to be sacrificial and to be frequently renewed. honesty of its handling. Other practical considerations age of construction. The circumstances of its building, This layer may be of exactly the same material as the then follow. determined by available materials and the use of wall. It may be reinforced, perhaps with straw to give it A building has four functions to perform: structural, techniques inherited or invented, are the prime greater cohesion to reduce the nature and size of the practical, aesthetic and evidential. Ideally every activity evidence of the movement of civilisations and one cracking and so to give it more weathering resistance in strengthening a building will meet these performance purpose of conservation must be to retain this and the straw will, itself, become a telling feature in the criteria which fall within practical and aesthetic evidence. But the artefact encapsulates scientific quality of the surface. It may be coated with a hardened dimension. The intervention will be: information. Fragments of organic material permit mud, perhaps containing a calcareous material such as i. economical- a practical dimension; ii. it will be dating by the measurement of atomic decay- the crushed lime or chalk. It may have been coated with a durable: also a practical dimension; iii. it will be Carbon 14 technique. Other analytical techniques material based on burned lime, at the simplest a lime effective in its designated use – a further practical include Thermoluminescence and Optical Dating, both wash, providing decoration and a coating weather dimension; iv. it will be sympathetic or visually of which use the effects of long burial to provide resistant qualities. acceptable – an aesthetic consideration; v. it will be alternative methods of dating by sampling. Other The handworked nature of such operations has given a explicit – an ethical and aesthetic consideration; techniques are known but little used – such as the special quality to such walls, many of which defy the vi. it will retain historic values – an ethical qualitative measurement of saline impregnation; others normal rules of level and plumb bob, being battered consideration; vii. it will not diminish the authenticity of have yet to be perfected or even to be discovered. The back as they reduce in thickness with height to shape monument – also an ethical consideration. analysis of soil particles and airborne deposits such as the building, curving and being modelled with subtle If these criteria are met the investment in strengthening pollen can provide evidence of conditions and dates of contours that suit the hand and please the eye. Such will be a success. construction. These and other forms of scientific buildings with natural organic shapes possess special Restrengthening of a structure must achieve an analysis provide information on sources of material qualities of their own which are best and, perhaps only immediate objective in restoring or enhancing the and distribution of the origins of materials which in the able to be perpetuated by the same methods as were ability of the construction to perform the task required long future of conservation will add to man’s used to create them. The batter or inward inclination of it. It must also be given longevity consistent with knowledge of the past. The loss or destruction of such frequently given to walls built in unbaked earths reflects acceptable costs. In practical terms the building must evidence is to be deplored. the natural instincts of the builder in handling material work well: in aesthetic terms it should please the user Conservation can serve one further purpose, sometimes of uncertain compressive strength and although earths and viewer. In ethical terms its retention is important treated as a justification; the economic utilisation of the under suitable compaction can achieve remarkable because it is tangible of the past. It is a surviving structures. As has been discovered by many builders in values in compression, their tendencies to become artefact. the past it can be less expensive to reuse a building fissiparous mean thet they are relatively weak structures - The visual quality of the structure may be enhanced or than to build anew. The adaptation of historic structures in tension, capable, nevertheless of being carried to diminished; to new or enhanced usefulness is often a economic heights of 30 m.; but it is out of this characteristic that - The interpretation may make a positive statement in ground for conservation. Earths and brickwork are the need for massive lower courses derives and hence terms of method, or time and of its funcion. massive and involve substantial labour. Patination and the tendency of builders towards the use of a batter - It may also enhance or alter the function of the the maturity of age are qualities which they gather and (inward slope) rarely found in more robust forms of structure. In doing this it may change the way it serves which cannot readily be simulated nor honestly created masonry. society and the reasons which justify its retention. afresh. Where society has a use for buildings of this The softness of earths, likewise, causes builders to While the social purpose may be to provide continuity calibre there is a strong economic ground for their round corners so that parapets, quoins and sharp edges within the historical past the cultural purpose is to retain conservation and skilled repair. To describe a purpose are softened off with the simple objective of dispersing the creative achievement represented by the buildings, of conservation as economic, however, raises the wear and erosion over a broader surface and thereby the town or the landscape. The intellectual endeavour concern that where economic advantage cannot be minimising effect. The occasional introduction of other which will have gone into the creation of architecture demonstrated a converse argument can be used for materials to provide drip moulds and to reinforce quoins can only be fully represented by that architecture itself. demolition and it may be more wisely thought that the provides a sharper counterpoint which distinguishes The level of cultural achievement may not be high but it economic argument is secondary to the fundamental some local styles of building. Likewise the formation of may nevertheless be important. In the oasis villages of purpose of historic continuity and cultural retention. openings in earth structures takes on special

112 ENGLISH VERSION characteristics due to the materials. Openings are conservators need not necessarily be bound by current stabilised in a particular state, perhaps paying special generally narrow and where and where no other work. To these some conservators would add a attention to the degree of ruination. It might, indeed, be material is used for the arch or lintel they tend to be minimalist approach, arguing understandably for doing encapsulated in another overriding structure – a process sharply pointed. In consequence some distinctive forms only what is most essential for structural reasons becoming more common as urban archaeology reveals have evolved such as the multiple triangular leaving undone even work necessary to control decay – more structures relating to urban history. By the perforations used in the traditional architecture of the a philosophy describable as decelerated erosion. removal of the weathering, decay can be halted without Nejed in Saudi Arabia. Sometimes such principles are clearly in conflict with the introduction of special stabilising techniques, but In the complexities of traditional roofing, domes and other objectives and for this reason the conservator even when the structure is not encapsulated the careful vaults have been elaborated, at times to an astonishing must understand the priorities which govern his work use of techniques which protect the core of the structure degree. Unreinforced, thin-shelled domes often take a and will be prepared to use his principles as the can slow down the rate of erosion in brick so that it parabolic form, the increasing compressive stress in the overriding criteria. proceeds very slowly. In earth structures patently this is lower zones being reflected in grater thickness of the There can be instances where no action whatever is less easy but more sophisticated techniques of control haunches. The naturally circular plan of such structures justified. A surviving structure below ground may be based on chemical and physical methods of protection is sometimes reflected in the ground plans of the analysed by remote sensing techniques, such as will increasingly be able to protect and restrain the rate buildings and in consequence in general structural magnetometry and be left undisturbed; but most of loss. patterns. In barrel vaulting the thickness of a haunch structures will require some form of repair or restoration - Maintained utility: this is most common and desirable may be lightened by secondary vaults introduced into if they are to survive. circumstance for built structure and presents the ideal the structural mass. In the formation of domes and An example might be a mud-brick structure of antiquity circumstance. vaults, ribbing, perhaps using especially dense blocks, exposed in archaeological excavations. The minimum All historic building need care and skill in their has this in turn has given rise to wide vocabulary of intervention would be careful exposure and recording maintenance and differing types of structure demand design dominated by the interlocking and intersection of followed by careful reburial. Such action, however, different skills and appropriate routines of care. Both ribs and arches. would be unattractive to authorities wishing to exploit brickwork and earth structures are of such age and Other practical features have evolved from need to the site for tourism. They might seek the stabilisation of continuity that long traditions of maintenance routines maintain such buildings. Coatings and renders are an the remains for purposes of permanent access and this, have evolved relating both to climate, locality and inherent and natural method of protecting earth in turn, might entail the irreversible introduction of nature of the materials and these routines have become structures from erosion and because of the frequency of chemical compounds and the reversible building of an established part of the lifestyle and a feature of the treatment, particularly in the case of mud renders, the shelter structures for protection. configuration in the buildings themselves. The support systems, have themselves become decorative The acceptability of such proposals would be weighed projecting poles and stone corbels of walls and domes features, their special characteristics varying with against their disadvantages. A less acceptable proposal that need frequent rerendering with mud are instantly locality. Even in the handling of the rendering, pattern- might be the construction on top of the genuine material recognisable as design features in the vernacular making becomes distinctive – from the characteristics of a replica or reconstruction of the original building. architecture of the regions where they occur. Many of providing drip-courses and drip-moulds to the finger However unacceptable this action might appear it could more subtle features model or effect the design of making left by the application of material. be preferable to a policy of apparent non-intervention- buildings right through the social scale. The drip And even wider variety of character flows from the i.e. of leaving the original structure exposed at the mercy moulds, which protect openings in the brickwork in wet introduction of many other materials which go with of the elements and visitors. Such a policy would quickly climates, have become distinction as the material itself. earth construction. The combination of earth and result in total destruction of the original material. Even Building conservation, like medicine provides for timbers produces distinctive systems of support from reburial might, however, carry with it severe preventive treatment, which is often overlooked at great panels of wattle to massive timber framing. These disadvantages where, for instance, the pattern of drainage cost. The maintenance of sophisticated machinery on characters vary from region and tribe to tribe and or vegetation was changed by new circumstances which human life depends has accustomed recent sometimes village to village, often intermixed and altering the water table or layer allowing root generations to the concept of planned inspections and betraying the long historical evolution which is one of penetration. Sometimes destruction is unavoidable. One planned maintenance and also to the idea that a the great social generators of vernacular building. archaeological layer might have to be removed in favour professional inspectorate is the most efficient answer to of the retention of another! Where major constructional the need for planned advice and continuing care. The Ethical and Aesthetic in the Conservation works will eradicate the site the option may be earliest signs of problems arising are often slight and it In conservation the policies applicable relate to the abandonment or removal of material to an alternative is necessary to differentiate between symptoms of degree of urgency, the nature of the defects, the type of location. The nature of the intervention to stabilise or importance and those which can be disregarded. threat and the intended use of the building, but in secure the original construction will be determined by Changes in the levels of ground water or loss of wind deciding on a course of action a number of overriding the circumstances and overriding imperatives but the protection which have little significance on a brick principle apply. Foremost among these id the principle nature of the material also pays a part. structure can lead to rapid failure in earth buildings. A of minimal intervention coupled with reversibility. The Mudbrick can only be removed with great difficulty and bulge in an earth wall may appear to be nothing more ideal is that the historic fabric is interfered with as little inherent damage to its nature, even though in the final than a natural contour but it may presage a significant as possible and that any intervention made should be event it may be restored visually. Brickwork, however, movement following a change in loading pattern or a capable of being withdraw leaving the fabric as it was. may be removed on bloc or piecemeal and reassembled loss of integrity. The nature of cracking in brickwork Conservation must always be undertaken with integrity skilfully to recreate the original arrangement, recreating will be a consequence of the distribution of loads and – the determination that materials appropriate to the the pattern of wear and weathering very precisely. In stress. The movement or strain will have direct purpose are used in a fitting manner. Couple with this process the mortar may be partially or largely renewed implications for the trained observer alerting him to the must go sympathy to ensure that new work is consonant but this renewal is no more than would have been the nature and point of the application or application or with the old. The character and tone of the building are case had building remained in situ but required pressure, the degree of movement and the possible determined by the original work and any intervention repointing. cause. must accord with the overriding qualities of the original. In postulating this simple series of possible events a Other forms of maintenance depend on assessing the Honesty dictates that all work is what it purports to be wide range of options become apparent and important nature and rate of weathering or erosion and the and datability allows that, on analysis, the age and definitions arise. The may be summarised: consequencies of the failure of other building nature of any intervention can be prove. A further -Deterioration: Controlled or uncontrolled. There is no components on the brickwork or earth structure. The principle might be defined as location, to underscore the philosophical compulsion to preserve the artefacts of effects of previous interventions are often ignored, it relationship of a structure to its site. It is argued that a the past. It is accepted that mountains should deteriorate being assumed that they have been affective. In practice building is irrevocably a part of its location, being naturally without interference and by similar argument a incompatibilities in materials or parts of structure may created for and welded by use to its site. While there are ruined structure may reach a state where its contribution not become apparent for some considerable time. Both some exceptions, in the case of buildings that can be to the landscape is one of decay. Occasionally man is brick and earths can withstand the incompatibilities of moved, this concept of location does encapsulate an moved to counteract erosion upon a mountain, thermal movement to some degree before the effects are important aspect of integral relationship of a building to (particularly if he is cause of it), and likewise he may readily visible. But in earth structures the resulting its surroundings. feel inclined to slow down or halt the erosion of a fractures are prime sources of water entry and decay. In Fundamentally these principles aim at honesty in monument. Alternatively the structure may be left to brickwork such discontinuities can alter the loadings on expressing the time and nature of the work of decay naturally out of a policy of non-interference or the structure and on other components with further long conservation, sympathy in ensuring that it does not simply as a result of economic necessity. term consequences, but the direct effects of water entry obtrude, integrity in its being of the appropriate calibre - Preservation: a ruined structure may be `frozen in may be less significant. Ab essential part of the and reversibility where possible so that future time’ by judicious protection from erosion. It may be continuous care needed by historic buildings is a

113 LOGGIA Nº12 programme of management. Regular inspections at own needs; that is to say, it can be seen as a vehicle of attitudes, with a few illustrious exceptions: either intervals determined by the nature of the structure must the evolution of the environment. On the other hand, adapting to a methodological approximation be recorded and reported. Appropriate work, scheduled however, in an interpretation closer to our interests, (sometimes crossing the undefined boundaries of perhaps well in advance, and a coordinated work under the auspices of historic contexts, restoration can “project freedom”); or hiding behind a specialist’s programme carried out will economise in labour as well be considered as the main activity of conservationist rigour, valid in itself but incapable of extending its in advance, and responses where necessary and defence and, as a result, it can be understood as a effects to the plural context in which the object stands. effective economic repair. bastion against evolution. Nevertheless, the correct method, necessary to Historic building is, by nature and definition, long lived, According to this paradoxical duplicity, which exists to overcome cultural confusion and specialist division, is outlasting the generations who use and care for it, and a certain extent, the restorer must stock up with equally obviously another; and, to say it by means of a formula therefore records of work done are of more than passing duplicitous theoretical and operative equipment: in that anticipates the conclusion of this intervention, it is interest to future management and historians; they other words, he must acquire equipment suitable for the method of recuperation-reconquest of spatial and become an important tool and store of knowledge in the guaranteeing both conservation and transformation. temporal contextuality; that is to say of the historic and operation of maintenance programmes. They should Which is, by the way, perfectly normal in the current meaning of the object with reference to its contain information as to the sourcing of materials, the intervention on buildings, although the restorer may not physical and cultural environment. nature and extent of work, the types of work carried out always be aware of the ambivalence and although it Indeed, in coherence with the most advanced and its sequencing. may be difficult for him not to have a set of development of cognitive sciences, contemporary The architecture of earths gathers strength. Last century methodological rules and principles such as he has been restoration cannot but take a stance against all has witnessed two counteracting currents already trying to formulate for nearly two centuries with a view preconceived, discriminatory and selective evident in the previous 100 years; the decline of the to drawing up precepts that will guarantee proper methodological lines such as those mentioned. Which vernacular and the rise of designed, which some might restoration. implies a great sense of measurement and a constant see the decline of building and rise of architecture. All the more so if, on the subject of architectural tension, which can turn into anxiety, by avoiding, on the Vernacular building in earths has been restrained for restoration, our action must work on a real context which one hand, underestimating marginal elements (although social reasons rather than technical. The common is usually a complex system whose value does not only they may be important in historic evolution) and, on the perception of earth structures has been of an inferior reside in limited material elements but rather in complex other, overestimating the messages destined, on the material lacking durability. They have been seen as the systems of meanings that require the same amount of contrary, to remain in the background. product of poverty and shunned for that reason. The conceptual procedures as a discretionary, selective and But in order to set off on the right foot, before going on antithesis has seen eaths as historically important and not sufficiently cautious intervention could obscure or to the technical stage concerning material aspects of ecologically desirable. The study of earth building has interrupt. In fact, the context to operate on is nearly restoration, it is necessary to concentrate on two degrees been lifted to the high planes of university discipline always a context in which the flows of change, be they that can be considered consecutive in the process: and scientific practice. While the craftsman has taken continuous or discontinuous, apart from acting on the language and common sense. If it is true that language up the trowel, the level and concrete block, the surveyor objects on which our action is performed, condition us must be understood as the communication tool between supervises a tractor pressing straw into soil with its equally, although we may be convinced we are the man and his environment, it is used as a link between heavy rubber treat. The antithesis has imbued earth subjects –and not the objects– of transforming two different systems (that of human activities and the building with aesthetic qualities unmatched in any phenomena. That is to say, they condition both things and “natural” system of the organization of things). Two parallel form of construction. human beings. It is, then, this fundamentally evolutionary systems that change, and relate to each other in different So at the dawn of this new century we find ourselves phenomenal chart that must measure the theories and ways, among which man’s capacity to “symbolize” is legislating to protect, establishing understanding of methodologies that strive to systematize scientifically the the axis between interpretation and project levels. On a historic significance, developing technologies of repair relationship between what exists, which is the specific cognitive level, it is all indicated with the term and and promoting skills of specialist construction. This success of the history of the past, the tireless human concept of co-evolution, as an obligatory passage from growing phenomenon rooted in the vernacular and operativeness, deliberately occupied in “inhabiting” the adaptation to the environment and, at the end of the day, promoted by the enthusiasm of individuals may mark world, entering to form an active part of evolution. as a re-definition of the fundamental –and project– the beginning of an era which revalues this humble and However, we descend from a tradition of intervention relationship between knowledge and reality. long serving building technology of the past and lays on ancient monumental heritage that –unlike the If we shift the axis of the discourse from the open important forms of construction in the future complex operations of medieval re-symbolization, environment to the historic-cultural background, it is up which expressed the “naturalness” of the evolutionary to artistic language to act as an intermediary in the process and, from the Renaissance onwards, of classical cognitive relationship, endowing the immaterial style– has run the course of continual re-assertion of the modifications that concern sense with a physical Mario Manieri Elia models of the past, assumed as a predominant or even appearance; and this in terms of symbolization and, Restoration As A Recuperation Of an absolute value. And in two ways: on the one hand, therefore, meaning; although between artistic languages “Common Sense” with decisions founded on a criterion of selective it is actually architectural language that, as we said conservation; and, on the other, with project decisions above, tends to have the greatest rigidity. And this In order to inhabit the world –using the word in the deliberately oriented at resuscitating the work in a rigidity, the harshness of architectural construction broad sense that Heidegger gave it of being there in situation considered “ideal” for it. –conceived to last in time– can be found above all in one’s environment– and to take on in the world the role Quite clearly it was a cultural prejudice, responsible for classical monumental and similar buildings, which have that corresponds to him in evolution, we know man has an ideologically exaggerated intellectual distance, in the indeed produced privileged models used by selective a semantic transaction that is language: verbal, poetic, sense of establishing in history strict scales of values. attitude; whereas greater plasticity can be found in the musical, figurative, etc. languages that express vital An attitude that in Italy may well go back to the less canonical and mostly “naturalistic” civic lexicons, energies and fundamental demands like the spirit of humanistic renovatio with its cultural consequences such as medieval sites. survival, hope, faith, fear or also everyday needs. Of the still, we might say, not quite surpassed by twentieth The fact is that, in any case, assuming the function of different languages, the constructive-architectural one is century development of thought about restoration, and language in that of “providing meaning,” architecture characterized by the intensity with which it manifests which therefore tends to survive. Up to the point that –especially in its most affirmative expressions –has the value of an affirmative stability, present in every there still seem to be those who believe in “liberalizing” always taken shape in relation with the aim of constructed form and expressing the force of a symbolic restoration works or, at least, the so-called “critical optimizing its role in terms of definition and investiture granted to the fundamental nature of needs restoration,” which legitimizes a selective analysis of stabilization of the meaning. And that, due to its ritual and the intentionality entrusted to architecture. But these historic stratifications, with the clear aim of discovering “classical” aim of pursuing the affirmation of the expressions of human societies develop differently in the magic moment of determining one condition of the highest and most absolute sacred value –the continuity time, in relation with the evolution of real processes and work that is to be conserved with preference over any of life– free from all contamination in time and space, contextual situations. later addition or alteration, so that the work can be from all technical imperfection and those arising from Restoration –whatever the not only univocal sense of defined as “original”. A condition regarding which all deterioration and, finally, from the confusion that stems this human activity that interests us and is the reason we later phases of a building are already marked by an from complexity. meet to talk about it– seems to occupy a controversial, implicit, potential condemnation. A condemnation that The old sciences of separation and selectivity, in fact or at least ambivalent, place in this clearly evolutionary has recently had very negative effects on some very overshadowing the evolutionary fact of reality, have chart. Indeed, on the one hand it can be seen as one of important monuments in Rome, which it will not be always tried to refer to a defined and definitive “beauty” the oldest and most diffuse of social activities, by means difficult to recall. understood as a canon and a precept. Indeed the of which mankind relate to their physical environment In most cases, there have been two kinds of reactions to traditional act of protecting values –put into practice by in order to “inhabit” it, gradually adapting it to their the permanence of a sort of confusion in critical institutional trustees– has made use of a discretionary

114 ENGLISH VERSION faculty capable of grasping, and defending in its artistic quality. beginning of the 20th century by the architects Luis programmed stability, the architectural meaning of In these cases, which constitute the majority of the Ferreres and Francisco Almenar. This proposal involves linguistically assertive productions; showing itself to be situations to be found in historic heritage, something at least three major operations. The first is the rather unwilling, or rather rigid as regards the like a chorus of voices arises in the context, whose dismantling of many of the pieces of the courtyard automation of pure material conservation, to stand harmony and dissonance and can only be heard by an conserved in two of the main temporary exhibition before the object submitted to their protection and attentive listener. An overabundant, discontinuous rooms of the IVAM, Centro del Carmen, rooms that consider it in its plural, evolutionary nature in space and semantic contextuality often arises from the “site,” in were originally used as the refectory and chapter room time. The action of protecting has preferably referred to whose sphere, if we deliberately reject the selective and of the Carmelite convent and currently belong to the a dry prohibition power with the character of a precept, discriminatory traditional short cuts that have caused so Generalitat Valenciana. The second is the treatment that apart from being passive and incapable of being much damage to historic buildings, we find that the should be given to these spaces after removing the considered as a project power, concentrated on grasping most assertive and compact flows of meaning are arches, resolving the connection with other rooms in the the dynamics of transformation of the form and interlinked; whereas the sonority of the ensemble lets us museum. And the third is the reconstruction of the meaning of objects in order to develop their glimpse chains of communicative links that speak to us Embajador Vich imposts in the new architecture of the authenticity. of historic courses of time that have left significant permanent exhibition rooms that will be built behind the Today, as we realize that this dynamic condition traces also and precisely in their way of interlocking, of current site of the Museo de San Pío V, after they have represents the conceptually most general and counteracting each other, of forming unexpected, been related to the rest of the pieces conserved in the quantitatively most diffuse case, we cannot elude the complex relationships. At the end of the day, common museum. All these operations are technically feasible, need to set aside the old selective models and perform a sense emerges as a value. As an overall value, identified but absolutely incongruous in view of what must be risky epistemological leap that would permit us to start precisely in its controversial and unstable being. eliminated from the present and future situation. scientifically from the perhaps more daring but more The capacity to listen, even when one’s hearing is good, When the political authorities of the Culture efficacious concept, more suitable for our time, of the will not determine a decision regarding intervention, but Department first considered the reconstruction of this “recuperation-reconquest of common sense” understood it is the essential condition to permit it. The decision architectural fragment in the Museo de San Pío V, I was as the recuperation of historic meanings. All this to may also be not to choose by prolonging, as we said invited to a meeting where Fernando Benito, the current tackle the more general theme of the restoration of apropos of ruins, the cognitive tension while the options Director of the Fine Arts Museum and myself were value in the face of a multiplicity of qualifying and evoked or proposed by the context multiply. The project asked to expound at length and in a cordial fashion our discriminating linguistic valencies. itself, on the other hand, does not necessarily end up by different opinions about the present and future We can, then, start with an example used as an extreme putting a stop to the hermeneutical and project process: installation of these remains. I cannot say, then, that I case, and it speaks to us in a de-contextualized and de- it can also be seen, and what it more, this is the most did not have a chance to air my opinions on this subject, vitalized but essential language: ruin. The context in authentic condition, as a moment of gradual and or that nobody listened to me, but my passionate and ruins, in fact, if it is not playing the decontextualized dialectic qualification in the flux. probably unconvincing defence of leaving Embajador role of a “stage setting” (according to a praxis that has To sum up, if restoration is taken as a process of Vich where it was once and for all did not convince any been very successful, at least from Charles V’s parade knowledge and project and if it is capable of listening, it of those present, and from that moment onwards, the through the Roman Forum, organized by Pope Paul III, is in itself a project that sets off a transformation, the initiative proposed by the director of the museum to its use in Mussolini’s programmes), can place the relationship with the historic context becomes real in reached the status of a decision of cultural policy. scientific nature of conservation in a paradoxical the cognitive tension started up by the process of From that time until the present day, the process has situation, since its meaning, apart from its historic value “providing meaning” or recuperation-reconquest of advanced slowly but surely. The following steps have as a material document (which brings us to Cesare meaning, as opposed to a reality that reaches us in a been taken: a detailed study of the existing pieces and a Brandi’s “instance” and the dogma according to which fragmented or interrupted manner and whose graphic hypothesis for their reintegration, which served “matter and not form is restored”), consists precisely of recomposition we can decide to postpone so as not to as the basis for a splendid exhibition and a documented its charm as a ruin. Which leads us to think that the stop the communicative flux emanating from it. catalogue about this Renaissance courtyard; new meaning of a ruin, or archaeological site, is to be found At a methodological level, we can take the Italian term interpretative studies on the architecture of the Vich precisely in the evidence of its accelerated and recupero to orient us; this word, in the place of the word palace carried out by historian Joaquín Bérchez; a neverending decadence, in the mutilated, incomplete “restoration” and used in the etymological sense of proposal for the reinstallation of the courtyard in the state of its material consistence, whose structural and taking up again (ri-prendere) and understanding afresh Museo de San Pío V drawn up by the architect Gómez- superficial degradation no longer guarantees the (ri-comprendere), proposes an action in process Ferrer; a project for the dismantling of the existing conservation of the form and the survival of the image. produced by man’s need to live with his historic pieces in the refectory of the Convento del Carmen; the The ruin, in short, essentially expresses the imminence heritage and by the role of this heritage in his quality of technical reports compulsory for this type of operations, of its “natural” death, to which John Ruskin requests no life. Recuperation-reconquest then as a process of which, by the way, were unfavourable, were drawn up defence be made: as an implicit cupio dissolvi (“I want interrogation and a response to the demand for real, in- and a positive opinion was given by the Foundation of to disappear”) whose positive effects can be entrusted to depth knowledge, and as an assumption of the Museo de San Pío V and notified to the Board of the vital reaction that tends to arise spontaneously; a responsibility. Recupero del senso, therefore, as a way Directors of the IVAM, a necessary courtesy since the reactive vitality, evident in the exuberant appearance of of rescuing attention but also reconquering the project. Carmen refectory is currently located on premises the vegetable invasion of ruins depicted in the 18th belonging to the IVAM (fig. 1). century, which refer to the vitality of the landscape as a Before stating my technical, restorational or backcloth behind an architecture now serenely re- museological reasons against this intervention, I must naturalized (brought back to nature). On the other hand, Julian Esteban Chapapría start by recalling the political opinions in favour of the reintegration of the physical component of the ruin The Insertion Of The Cortile In The moving and reassembling the courtyard. After all, the is openly posited as a paradox in a monumental Old Convento Del Carmen: historic analysis and evaluation of the heritage so presence whose meaning consists of its progressive Noucentiste Museology Or rigorously carried out over many years by Professors physical disintegration. Architectural Requalification Bérchez and Benito had not gone any further until the But the most general case of a conservationist and latter was appointed to take over the directorship of the moderately transformative intervention in an existing At the end of 1996, the Museological Project for the Museo de San Pío V and found there several pieces context opens up the issue of the nearly always great Valencia fine arts museum, known as Museo de San Pío from the Vich courtyard, at the transcendent moment at plurality of languages present in the contexts examined. V, was completed. This project, important to carrying which the expansion of the museum was being prepared. Even in the case of architectural products characterized forward the necessary ambitious expansion of this The abovementioned catalogue of the exhibition by especially assertive languages, like for example transcendental cultural venue and guarantee the proper contains the typical introductions by several public those of classical origin, the more or less long exhibition of its extraordinary collection, included what I figures, who pronounce or are made to pronounce vague vicissitude elapsed between the natural and social consider a disconcerting proposal: that of locating in one but important statements that could be used just as well modification agents has had an inevitable influence in of its inner courtyards the one from the palace in to defend maintaining the fragments in the old Carmelite activating mutation processes that have left their mark. Embajador Vich, now partly installed on the site of the refectory or as a prologue for an updated catalogue We can assume, then, that architectural construction, old refectory of the Convento del Carmen in Valencia. explaining the works by Ferreres and Almenar: rather than a given object, is proposed as a This text contains my reflections about this project, from “All periods have left their stamp, in the form of a transformation process. And this process can only be an absolutely personal viewpoint, explaining why I do greater or lesser number of examples of excellent developed through languages by going through not understand or agree with this initiative, and above all buildings and monuments all over the territory of moments of greater or lesser expressive density and to let people know and value the results of the insertion Valencia, which constitute an essential part of an semantic coherence. In other words, greater or lesser of these remains into the Museo del Carmen at the identity coherent in its great diversity... The study of the

115 LOGGIA Nº12 remains conserved and their future contextualization is architectural structure and varying with the construction portal of Xàtiva Cathedral, the project for the facade of a clear example of how our memory is still our best tool of the Renaissance cloister or the baroque staircase. We Valencia University; in the meantime, he carried out when dealing with the passage of time. must add to this the fact that the different pieces were interesting work privately: a working-class quarter in “Such outstanding aspects as the reaffirmation of the not always conserved in the evolutionary process, Benimaclet (1910), the Hotel Reina Victoria in Las Renaissance in our lands, with its own specific which made it more difficult to understand the others. Barcas street (1911) or the Giner house in Sorní street personality and full consolidation of the Italian models, On the basis of these two views, the present reality and (1912), both in Valencia. A small detail of his work is or the substantiation of our continual privileged cultural the evolutionary ensemble, the different readings can be the white marble staircase that he designed and built, in and artistic relationship with the rest of the Continent made: the structuring importance of the two courtyards, his eclectic style, in Jaúdenes palace, one of the palaces can and in fact do fade into the background in view of a the major role of the key parts of both of them, such as that make up the current site of Valencia Provincial more important circumstance: the progressive the new staircase and the residual space of the old one Council, in which he showed a correct control between recuperation of the referents of our past and their now connecting the two cloisters, the segregation of the the original language of the building and the projection into the future by means of their implication church and the bell tower, the ways in from the outside, intervention language, but which in our present stylistic in the social weft of the Valencian Community...” the interior itineraries, the filling in of the gardens ignorance could be considered an interpretative or I do not know whether their projection into the future towards the north and west, etc. At the same time each integrative error. His urbanistic works are also and social benefits are more important than the historic element is examined and valued individually and extremely relevant; with Calvo and Arnau he drew up fact itself, but it is worth mentioning the opinion of comparatively: the refectory, the spaces giving on to the in 1887 the first Expansion Plan for Valencia and later Pierre Nora, who sustains that history is the always Renaissance cloister, the facade of the church, the new for Gandía, and he is the author of a project for the incomplete and problematic reconstruction of what is galleries, etc. Interior Renovation of Valencia written in 1891. no longer there, whereas memory always belongs to our The Convento del Carmen represents, aside from Elected a member of San Carlos Fine Arts Academy in time and constitutes a living link with the eternal collection episodes, the first and only landmark in Valencia in 1896, on the recommendation of Martorell present and history is nothing but an unadorned museum history in the 19th century Valencian and Belda, he made the opening speech of the 1898-99 representation of the past. Community. Its subsistence today is due to this academic year on the subject “The concept and Trying to put in order the reasons for disagreeing with transcendent fact, that is to say, to the initiative of the conditions of the idea and the form in Art,” an example this operation of historic recuperation leads me to take a Academia de San Carlos that turned it into the Museo of his customary moderation and his tendency to choose stance as strongly in favour of its permanence in its de la Desamortización (Disentailment Museum) (fig. 2). the best of every architectural style and then reelaborate current site as against its removal to a new one, two Between 1839 and 1946 the museum was progressively it. He became a member of the Provincial Monument facts which are substantially different although fatally enriched with improvements to the installations and the Committee, and it is worth mentioning that Ferreres is overlapping. What must be made clear, in any case, is addition of new works of art by the management and the only Valencian architect among his contemporaries that if all or part of the fragments of the demolished patrons. A strange and perhaps not fortuitous life cycle who dealt with the theory of the restoration of courtyard were currently in storage, forgotten or has today, or in the near future, turned it into a museum monuments, in two moderate and well elaborated texts otherwise, the problem would be very different. of the 19th century, about which the building itself published in 1917 and 1921 in the magazine Archivo de The first point to make would be to state that it is not true obviously has a lot to say. We must remember, in this Arte Valenciano. During those years he was appointed to think that the remains of the Vich courtyard are “lost” context, that the Renaissance remains that we are architect of the Ministry of Public Education and Fine to our memory. Part of them is fortunately inventoried, dealing with here are not the only additions while it was Arts, and was in charge of the conservation of the built stored and exhibited by the Fine Arts Museum, and used as a museum. heritage of the province of Teruel, and made reports on another part is integrated into a museum very much The project and location of the fragments of the Vich the restoration of the Mudejar towers and San Pedro visited by the public. In fact the concerts of the Grup courtyard in the old refectory of the Convento del church. Instrumental Valencià are held there and important Carmen was the work of the architects and academics Luis Ferreres was a witness and scholar of the polemics exhibitions scheduled by the IVAM include them in the Luis Ferreres and Francisco Almenar, who were 57 and between restorers and anti-restorers, Lampérez and “most innovative trends of modernity” in the words of 33 years of age respectively at the time, with 33 and 5 Cabello versus Torres Balbás and Martorell, among one of those who want to dismantle it as the expression years’ practice, in other words, a mature and a young others, and wrote: of an unfulfilled wish. The remains of the courtyard have architect united, among other things, by their mutual “Restoration on dead monuments is very difficult if not formed part of the Fine Arts Museum since they were friendship with the important architect Antonio impossible. Reflections of a long gone civilization and a incorporated to the Carmen in 1904, when the Palace was Martorell, whose presence seems to hover over their social order, and whoever wants to restore them must given ample publicity, and later the gallery where they appointment for the job. It is not possible to delimit the acquire a deep knowledge of their spirit and their were located became the Ancient Clothing Drawing participation of each in the works performed, but essence, identify himself with their way of feeling and Room of the Fine Arts Faculty, so this space has been Ferreres’ experience and training are inclined to make their manner of expressing; for Architecture is a social unused for only nine out of the last hundred years. us feel he had a greater share in the solutions adopted, art and cannot do without this character; apart from the Finally, one cannot speak about “rediscovering pages of which is why we perhaps unfairly refer to this architect fact that the lack of integrating elements or important our history”, “a wish to safeguard and protect history” or as the author. accessories and the impossibility of achieving “inviting all Valencians to participate in an exciting joint Luis Ferreres Soler (fig. 3) is an important Valencian trustworthy, absolutely dependable information to enterprise” as has been done in reference to moving the architect whose career at the turn of the century left us restore them must necessarily leave great voids... In remains to San Pío V. some interesting works on architecture and town such circumstances, we understand that all we can do is And to be logical, I must now start to mention the planning. Born in Xàtiva in 1852 and deceased in 1926 put the remains back in place so that they will be reasons behind keeping the Renaissance fragments of in Madrid, where he studied architecture and graduated sheltered from the elements, out of the way of any sort the Vich courtyard in the Convento del Carmen, in 1876 in the company of other Valencians like of profanation by the ignorant, and carefully because of all the merits and importance of their current Federico Aymamí, Joaquín Mª Arnau, Antonio maintained. Putting them in a museum can only be installation. Martorell or José Camaña. Still in Madrid, he worked accepted as a last resort when no other solution is The series of elements that constitute the site of the old as an assistant to the then Director of the School of possible." Convento del Carmen affords a sample of the most Architecture Francisco Jareño in the construction of the The location of some of the pieces from the Vich palace important phases in the history of architecture in National Library. The personality and architectural courtyard, carried out between 1904 and 1909 on the Valencia. Its value resides in the juxtaposition of two production of Luis Ferreres, dealt with in a monograph north and east walls of the refectory, is a worthy and approaches, one synchronic and the other diachronic. written by Taberner and Giménez, stand out for his intelligent architectural operation of eclectic syntax, The first stems from a perfectly defined built reality, the pondered eclecticism, about which the former of these both from a heritage conservation viewpoint and from a fruit of historic sedimentation. This unique reality is authors said: museological one. Ferreres’ starting point was the made up of a succession, by addition, of very diverse “...the contained moderation, the rigorous purity of the irreversible situation that the palace had disappeared architectural spaces, with forced or non-existing ornamental forms and the conscientious control of his and was never to return, and that he had inherited a few relations, mutilated or seriously altered, with great merit trade are the basis of a work not very brilliant in fragments of a courtyard, not a complete courtyard or as regards the models, but with the underlying problem appearance, but which reflects an undeniable building, and that both the museum and the fragments of the difficulty in understanding it. The second professional skill and a very rare maturity in the would gain from being placed together (fig. 4). Three approach arises from the consideration of being an architectural scene of the late 19th and early 20th attitudes led him to choose the solution adopted; one, evolutionary ensemble in which each piece has an century in the city of Valencia.” the consideration of the architectural remains from a interpretation in relation with the whole at the time of Luis Ferreres was a municipal architect in Valencia humanistic point of view, precisely as the cultural its construction and in relation with the successive between 1883 and 1886, and his most outstanding essence of the object to be reinstalled; the second, the ensembles that were erected. In this sense we can read public works are the municipal slaughterhouse of understanding of the diaphragmatic architecture of the the refectory fulfilling a role in the 14th century Valencia (1895), Cullera market building (1896), the refectory; the third and last, linked to the previous one,

116 ENGLISH VERSION is both the use of the imposts to gain exhibiting space construction of very different sorts of buildings, the reintegration based on the existing fragment, and the and a possible future expansion of the museum, which churches with medieval arches and structure erected in architect decided against it. We must also point out that could only be northward due to the free space available. Valencian territory constitute a definite type with very Ferreres insisted on emphasizing the fragmentary Let us analyse in detail each of these points. Joaquín few variants: the chancel oriented towards the rising nature of the material he used by making a Bérchez and Fernando Benito have explained that the sun, a single nave, no apse and a side entrance. These constructional abstraction in the definition and finish of palace was built around 1527, and that the courtyard churches were still being built during the 16th century, the back of the wall, where he installed the serliana or was reminiscent of Roman courtyards, with a free although they began to undergo many transformations Palladian motif, just as he did not reduce the thickness interpretation of Vitruvian models, to judge from the for cultural, financial or urbanistic reasons. of the wall separating the refectory and the chapter closing of the upper floor and the presence of the large Corresponding to schemes of precise transformation, room any more than necessary, placing the pieces flat windows illuminating the main rooms of the palace, dictated by the type and the new requirements, it is on the face of the main room and not replacing the and which were a combination of classical design and difficult to find a building free from these modifications missing scallop-shaped moulding, but leaving the traditional medieval mullioned windows in an exercise today. Of these evolutions, there are two repeated over skylights open (fig. 9). of stylistic adaptation to Valencian formulas (fig. 5). and over again that can be related with the case we are Something that does not go unnoticed about the historic Thus we could possibly imagine the simultaneous dealing with here, the first of which is the addition of images of the courtyard is that the “order” is placed on presence of an Italian designer and a Valencian master new spaces over one of the fronts, usually chapels. In certain bases that did not exist in the original layout, builder, the cutting of Italian marble stones, the this case, the transformation is simple because the front bases which are continual on the lintelled sides of the importation of pieces from Genoa, such as transportable is replaced by an arch, perforating the outer wall that serliana that make it impossible to circulate among fragments made to order, which were starting to come was previously the apse; examples of this are the them and that have the projection that corresponds to into vogue at that time, as in the case of the columns of additions made to the parish churches of Villafranca or the column system. What is the reason for this the Colegio del Patriarca. All of this amounts to an the Pobla de Benifassà. The second common way of alteration? If we look at a picture of the Martínez eclectic courtyard to begin with, with a more purely transforming the type is the opening of the existing Campos room, the old refectory, taken around 1909 Italian part, the part that was later located in the fabrics between the exterior buttresses to create side (fig. 10), in the south wall giving on to the Gothic Carmelite refectory, and another part on the upper floor, chapels. In this case the buttresses are increased in cloister, in one of the chapels inserted between the which Bérchez considered to be more Valencian, and of depth and height, creating a new background and vaults buttresses, we can see the presence of what is known as which fifty per cent of the decorated pieces are still resting on the diaphragms, of which there are many the portal of the Duque de Mandas palace, whose half- conserved according to the inventory drawn up recently. examples: Santa María in Liria (fig. 6), Sant Pere in columns, which already had bases, are also located on This courtyard, the Castillo de la Calahorra (Granada) Xàtiva, San Antón in Valencia, San Miquel in new ones, and the redundancy of this formula leads us and the Castillo de Vélez Blanco (Málaga) have been Benigànim or the parish churches of Catí and San to believe that it is not a change of “order” carried out considered to form the three most important courtyards Mateo. by Ferreres, but seems to have been used for exhibition of early Spanish Renaissance architecture. Luis Ferreres seems to have known and followed both purposes, that is to say, for the purpose of placing the The advantages and disadvantages of the past were forms of transformation in his work on the Convento element inserted on a pedestal to show that it is a studied for the first time in detail during the period of del Carmen, the former to connect the chapter room foreign object. In the case of the serliana, we must humanism, and its importance resided in the fact that with the refectory and the latter to make new chapels admit that this method also helps adapt their height there was actually a past as such, which could be between the buttresses of the north wall. We could say better to the space of the old refectory. beneficially mastered by admiring it from the present. these are canonical methods of transformation with Ferreres installed the columns and arches in the north However, in the Renaissance an exaggerated obeisance regard to diaphragmatic architecture, broadly used and wall respecting the rhythm of the corridors established to antiquity was considered an error, as humanistic permitting successive expansions of the museum and by the diaphragmatic arches, providing a continual thinking had three views of the past: one was a sense of the permanence of the medieval spaces. They might be reading, a sort of unfurling or linear development of the distance, that is to say, a feeling that the examples considered obvious solutions, but only when they are old courtyard. It was located on the north wall for two admired were a long way away in time, something that based on the mastery and understanding of already reasons: one, because of the existence of the Gothic permitted considerable freedom to connect with the past. existing architectures, dialogues that are not always cloister in the south wall and the presence of chapels Another one was a theory of imitation, initiated in properly established. between the buttresses, whose vaults are lower than the classical Rome but elaborated by the Renaissance sense A careful reading of the insertions made between 1904 arches on pedestals set up by Ferreres, and the other, of distance. And the third was the idea of literal revival and 1909 reveals to us the syntax used by Ferreres in because it is the direction in which the museum would or rebirth, associated to acts of exhumation and the definition of the new “antique gallery,” placing possibly be enlarged, as indeed it was a few years later resurrection, metaphors that came to mind through the partially and in a different way from their original by the same architect. distance from the past and the resulting fragmentation function several fragments from the Vich courtyard and A front view of the north wall with the Vich arches and burial. Distance, imitation and revival were not establishing another way of seeing these objects and a installed shows us a symmetrical front in which the exclusive premises of the Renaissance, and in fact relationship with the support and the space where they central bay, the axis of the composition, contains the Ferreres, as a good eclectic, put them into practice by are located. In the first place, we must appreciate that double corner semi-columns corresponding to the locating the Vich fragments, which constituted a the ground floor of the courtyard originally had eight second serliana crowned with an arch. In the other four classicist past for him, in the Convento del Carmen. The arches, four lintels, eight free-standing columns, four spaces between buttresses, two on the left and two on veil of historic distance and discontinuity that he found double corner half-columns, four large skylights (two of the right, Ferreres placed another four arches that regarding 16th century work is similar to that of the which are partially conserved) and four smaller required eight columns and, as he only had six, in the humanists regarding ancient Rome, and that of the skylights. Of all these pieces, all the arches, the columns first arch into the refectory from the Renaissance Romans regarding the ancient Greeks. As occurs in the and corner half-columns, two of the three lintels cloister, the first on our left on entering the room, he Renaissance with the use of classical models, the most conserved and the two large skylights that were intact added two plaster columns to complete the composition innovative thing was undoubtedly the dialectic were reinstalled,, that is to say, the only things not required; these are easy to distinguish if we touch them, emulation and the great achievement of establishing installed were one lintel of a serliana and the four small because the texture and the temperature help us under a new light the links between the Renaissance and skylights, which shows what a good installation understand the artifice. In two of his publications, Elías antiquity, such a far removed classical inheritance that its solution it was as regards taking advantage of the pieces Tormo shows two floors of the Museo del Carmen at use required a vigorous recuperation and reanimation, available and exhibiting them, in a layout different from different stages of expansion (figs. 11 & 12), and as just what Ferreres employed. However, they too were the original (figs. 7 & 8). regards what we are interested in pointing out here, we aware of the double need to admire and transcend the In the case of the serliana, it fulfils its role as a can see how the chapels or new spaces added on were classical period, and they did not restrict themselves to perspective background to the diaphragmatic space on designed to be open on the interior and exterior surfaces wavering between devotion and rejection, adoration and the main axis of the refectory, treated as a major piece according to the growth of the spaces and the sacrilege, conservation and transformation, but or arch of triumph. If we accept that the recently drawn museology, demonstrating its great flexibility and maintained a balance between these discrepancies. up inventory does not differ from the one Ferreres had permitting the fluidity from south to north initiated with A second attitude that we have mentioned is the sense for the installation in the Carmen, and that the pieces the connection between the Gothic cloister and the of insertion on the basis of an understanding of collected by the Academia de San Carlos after the refectory. In any case, Ferreres designed the five chapels diaphragmatic architecture. Thanks to the thesis by Dr demolition of the palace are the ones still conserved, open on the refectory side, a presentation that we cannot Arturo Zaragozá we know that the use of this the logical conclusion is that the two serlianas were not appreciate today as two of the bays have been closed up. constructive system in convents has left in Valencian complete because the crowning impost of one of them, The material insertion of the remains made by Luis architecture examples with buttresses both inside and one of the straight lintels and parts of the skylights Ferreres is most interesting too, regardless of the outside the nave. It should be remarked that, as opposed were missing. In other words, for the second serliana to composition. In the first place, to achieve the great to the exhaustive possibilities of using this system in the be installed, it would have required a greater degree of opening communicating the chapter room and the

117 LOGGIA Nº12 refectory at the level of the upper framework, dormitory old Vich courtyard, which had taken on other, in his by closing the wall that separates it from the old church level in other words, he created a large lintel with opinion and my own, more restrictive nuances with or refectory and then opening a door to connect it with compound metal profiles and later proceeded to eclectic freedom of thought. Another reality contrary to the ambulatory in the cloister.” This process is rather demolish the fabric between both rooms and place the the preservation of the heritage that we have just more hard work than it seems. In the first place, we do fragments of the serliana in the resulting gap. The explained and forming part of our scant recollection as not know what system was used to cover the chapter solution in the north wall is slightly different, according regards this matter is that in those years, in 1904 room and there are few ways of finding out, because the to the studies and drawings of Rafael Soler, since in the precisely, the Vélez Blanco palace was sold to a French framework separating it from the dormitory above was space between the buttresses the pisé-de-terre fabrics interior decorator and was sent to Paris and from there renovated with a metal structure, presumably at the turn were propped on discharging arches made out of brick to New York in 1913, having been purchased by of the century. But, besides, the preliminary studies of the same thickness as the arches to be inserted and George Blumenthal, who inserted it into the house he have revealed that there used to be a central crypt and locating on them the perimetral cornice of the new was having built in Park Avenue, and when this was in two tiered perimetral benches and even the space, where the skylight glass is set, making the turn demolished, it was stored in the Metropolitan communication with the cloister, if it is opened up, transition to the total thickness of the pisé-de-terre in the Museum in that city. In 1964 it was definitively would have to be through a double chapel made during resulting chamber between the lower plane of the installed in the Museum (fig. 16), a fact that the present the general refurbishment in 1670, during which skylight and the roof with metal profiles (fig. 13). case wishes to emulate, without taking into account the numerous Gothic elements were eliminated and the On the other hand, we do not know how much care very different attitude and trajectory in a case worthy of connection between the cloister and the chapter room was taken in the demolition of Vich palace, and greater consideration. was covered with classical ornamentation, one of the although there is little information about the coffered The space in the Convento del Carmen is not a few traces still conserved of this Baroque style ceilings of the main rooms, we must suppose that in refectory built at the end of the 13th century or the redecoration. In fact the pointed arch that can be seen demolition works like this at that time there were no beginning of the 14th and does not contain the remains from the chapter room towards the cloister was inserted special techniques used to dismantle and conserve the of the courtyard in their original location, since both by the museum and has nothing to do with the pieces that were taken over by the Academy, so it is not disappeared to make one of the galleries of the Fine Carmelite convent, and according to the same purifying surprising that Ferreres felt quite free to lay out the Arts Museum, which is a new building that must be criteria used to dismantle the Vich courtyard, its pieces as he wished, an issue that can be checked if we recognized and appreciated for its true value and removal should be considered. accept the layout of fragments made by Josep Martí importance, as the architect José María Sancho has The dismantling project continues: “...once the wall based on the drawings by Josep Fornés (1801) (fig. warned about the “the risk of destruction of a valuable separating it from the chapter room is closed, what was 14). On the basis of this supposition, several comments work and the decrease in value of a monument enriched originally the old church would partly recover its can be made about the new layout. For example, given by it.” Do we not understand the complex evolution of original space (although not its height) if the walls the individualized treatment on arches and columns, we history better thanks to the conservation of this mixed between buttresses were rebuilt in the same line, know that the original double prop or corner imposts, structure? Should we go back over the path trodden to a eliminating the side rooms and passages.” Researchers of which five are conserved and three have hypothetical point at the cost of losing a valuable into the Convento del Carmen came to the conclusion a disappeared, were not used. So these voussoirs were memory? It is doubtful that this is the only way to long time ago that the hypothesis made by Tormo not manipulated or refashioned in the insertion to make explain the austerity of the convent and the exultant eighty years before regarding the old church being new imposts but voussoirs of the unused arches were modernity of the space opened, around which the rooms converted into a refectory could only be sustained by used, the five arches required ten imposts altogether, of Jerónimo Vich’s house were situated. Denying the the orientation and constructional style and that all the which correspond exactly to the main voussoirs of two 19th century in order to legitimate the 14th is a way of tests have demonstrated that, as in many such cases, the arches, which together with the six installed make up understanding and reconstructing history that I certainly church evolved on its own site and so forms part of the the total number of the eight in the courtyard. Ferreres do not agree with or practise, more suitable for a structure of the present church. On the other hand, the made the replacements absolutely necessary to professional of the “history of antiques” that makes men operation suggested seems to be especially difficult assemble them (three cymas, part of the base of a dilettante spectators and reduces their capacity to because it would leave the Ferreres or Goerlich galleries double semi-column and part of the scape of a double understand for themselves. Other equally important uncommunicated or badly communicated, without semi-column) leaving the rest of the pieces with the problems will arise on shifting the remains of the Vich mentioning the fact that it would be totally impossible losses caused by wear and tear, accidents and man, courtyard. One is the state in which the spaces of the to recuperate the light coming from the north and the thus revealing a great sensibility about the material old Convento del Carmen will be left and the treatment unknown bays into the refectory, which can be seen in conservation of the fragments. they are to be given and another is the recomposition or the only existing photograph of the building taken The task of inserting different fragments of the palace reconstruction of the courtyard at the fourth stage of the before Ferreres inserted the imposts. of Embajador Vich which the Academia de San Carlos expansion of the Museo de Bellas Artes San Pío V, an The proposal for the dismantling project ends as had collected after it was demolished in 1859 is known operation that involves dismantling Ferreres’ work. follows: “...the total recuperation of the spaces will not to have been performed a few years later in a priceless As regards the first of the two issues mentioned, the be effective until the upper frameworks over the old attempt to conserve the Valencian built heritage. The architect Salvador Vila drew up a Dismantling Project church and the chapter room are eliminated.” In what architect Salvador Escrig inserted some of the columns for the architectural elements of the Embajador Vich reintegration? What should be done, then, with the in the new entrance from the street into the Renaissance Courtyard last June in a commission by the Department paintings of the 14th century and later that decorate the cloister (fig. 15), and some of the upstairs windows in of Cultural Promotion and the Preservation of Artistic monks’ cells on the upper storey and which are partly the old –and now demolished– infirmary that looked Heritage. This project, apart from the technical conserved? I am afraid that it could all end up in the onto the Gothic cloister, at the same time as the determinations for the dismantling process, contained Museo de San Pío V in a strange return to the future. Academy decided to install one of the two serlianas in the aims sought for the Convento del Carmen, which No, since this proposal neither helps understand the the wall between the chapter room of the refectory of were detailed as follows: on the one hand, to leave the dismantling of the Vich courtyard fragments nor the disentailed Carmelite monastery in 1864. The spaces in such a way that they can go on operating as a involves a step forward in the recuperation of the commission received by Ferreres and Almenar museum and, on the other, to try to bring it back to its Convento del Carmen, let us stop these arguments here. implemented that decision forty years afterwards, but medieval appearance, a proposal that is also forwarded The second and last problem to analyse is the their intervention had a more transcendent aim: to turn as a panacea in the catalogue of the exhibition about the reassembling of the palace courtyard in the Museo de what had until then been a tawdry art gallery into a Vich courtyard. Bellas Artes in what may or may not be its final fully-fledged museum. The great effort of the private At present the works intend to leave the arches that are journey, this time across the historic barrier of the river. sector and the institution with the fragmentation and situated concentrically over the voussoirs that are to be As everybody knows, the old seminary of San Pío V, roofing of the Gothic cloister was thus prolonged into removed and the lateral piers between the buttresses built between 1683 and 1744, and since 1946 the seat of the first years of the 20th century, and continued with that will remain after the columns are taken away, and the Fine Arts Museum, has been undergoing an the successive building of the adjacent rooms in the in the place of the serliana there will be a large lintel expansion process organized by the Ministry and the decades that followed, permitting the city to boast one between the walls separating the assembly hall in the Local Department of Culture since the eighties. In mid of the most prestigious museums in the country not chapter room from the refectory. As a result, gaps that 1999 a modification of the 4th Stage was drawn up by only for its collection but also for its size. were made to insert the Renaissance fragments will be the architect Gómez-Ferrer, among other reasons in Joaquín Bérchez explains that the difficulties in locating left bare, awaiting an intervention on these spaces and order to house what has come to be known as the Sala it but also the time elapsed between the 1864 attempt the scars produced that will restore the historic traces Vich. This modification, which presented, rather than and the final installation in 1909 can be seen “...in the and the functionality of the museum quarters. the project and museological determinations of the strong eclecticism and the hybrid way in which work Nevertheless, the dismantling project emphasizes that imposts, a reserve of space for this operation and its was done on the courtyard...” among other things “...the so-called chapel of life, the old chapter room, repercussions on the general layout of the museum, because Ferreres’ generation had lost the memory of the may be reintegrated now with its original configuration, together with the images of the ground plan and

118 ENGLISH VERSION sections that were published in the catalogue on the this reconstruction is as easy as putting together a modernity, but resulting in postmodern irony. Vich courtyard, is the only document available to make jigsaw puzzle consisting of the Convento del Carmen Until the 19th century, those who reflected about the some brief remarks about this reconstruction of the and the pieces stored in San Pío V. past imagined it similar to the present, but with the courtyard. As regards the first point, it is worth recalling the advent of this century, the recognition of our difference According to this proposal, the Vich courtyard is to be interest that this building has aroused since the from the past stimulated us to conserve it and the very installed behind the northeast bay of the cloister of San history of architecture exists and scholarly studies act of conserving it made the difference even more Pío V, in other words, behind the body situated at the circulate. In his recent research, Bérchez cites as obvious. So yesterday, venerated as a source of identity, end of the cloister and with its main axis parallel to the many as seventeen bibliographic quotations about the appreciated as a precious resource, was turned into principal facade (fig. 17). Thus it would be placed palace and says:“...Perhaps this phenomenon is something more and more different from today, and a outside the historic building, although attached to it and somehow connected with the fact that this courtyard creative use was even made of it. Not recognizing also attached to the new galleries that are going to be from Embajador Vich has been a real problem from Ferreres’ work as heritage to be respected seems to erected. The access to the open courtyard room on the the historic architectural valuation of the period and suggest a return to the notorious “querelle” between the ground floor will be through two new spaces, acting as the monument, a problem that has to do with the Ancients and the Moderns that took place in the 17th transition elements between the Baroque architecture scarcity of documentary data about the work, the and 18th centuries, a battle in which antiquity was and the Vich courtyard. On the other hand, there is no author or his roots, and it is possible also with the considered to be far away and its scattered vestiges to connection on the upper floors of the Vich courtyard intricate perception of the building itself, taking into serve as examples only if they were resuscitated and and the upstairs storeys of the Baroque building and the account that after it was demolished –in 1859– its made whole again, and the Moderns were considered to new rooms, and we do not even know whether these presence was fragmentary, leaving behind it a stream be “dwarfs on the shoulders of giants”. Poor dwarfs and spaces will be correctly dimensioned in depth with of pieces and visual traces, whose localization –in poor giants. Today everything is more complex, but if respect to the palace or what function they are to fulfil, both cases– has involved a complex and irregular there is one thing we must agree on, it is that, in spite of whether a gallery or a stage (fig. 18). Therefore, as far archaeological chore...” the growing interest it arouses, these are not good times as we know it will be a superficial reconstruction of two A real situation to which we must add the fact that in for antiquity, either in the form of history or in the form vertical fronts of the Renaissance impluvium, and recent years nobody has bothered to relate or make of memory, given the enormous frailty of the latter. conjectures must be made as regards the ends of the links in situ between the fragments assembled in the ambulatory and the construction system of its vaults, for refectory and the courtyard and palace of Embajador which Fornés (1801) designed a strange mixture of Vich, or with the rest of the pieces later localized in the barrel vaults and Sanz (1909) (fig. 19) a different Museo de Bellas Artes, except to suggest the removal of Salvador Vila Ferrer construction system. The truth is that the mere existence the former. This would be easy to solve by setting up a The Recuperation Of The Courtyard of the ornamental fragments of the courtyard in no way permanent exhibition in the chapter room or the spaces From The Palace In Embajador Vich guarantees a trustworthy reconstruction of the building between the buttresses, with the support of a careful Don Jerónimo Vich y Vallterra structure without making risky and/or reductive didactic background and using the most sophisticated The Vich family had come from Catalonia when King conjectures. The formal, stylistic value of the pieces to technology for museums and exhibitions. This Jaime I requested the services of their forebear Guillem, be reassembled is the only source available and, permanent exhibition, which is becoming common who settled in Valencia. Don Jerónimo Vich, who was therefore, the beginning and the end of the operation, practice in restored monuments, would permit, after the born in 1459, served the Catholic Monarch King whereas the intention is that, instead of Ferreres’ necessary research, both the understanding of the two Ferdinand from an early age and was sent by him to insertion, an orthogonal layout on four walls would be buildings in their different constructional phases and the Rome in 1507 as Spanish Ambassador, first under Pope clearer and would permit people to appreciate the operations of heritage preservation carried out by the Julius II and later under Pope Leon X. courtyard better, which we must not forget is an Academy in the 19th century, granting them the merit It is not surprising, then, that he was familiar with the architectural element that only makes sense if it fits into that is their due without needing to eliminate the works of the artists who worked for these popes. We the spaces around it. On the other hand, unless the architectural understanding of Ferreres’ museological refer to Michelangelo, Raphael, Bramante, Peruzzi and archaeological excavations throw more light on it, the intervention, an irreversible loss that looms ahead. Sangallo. It may have been around 1516 that the pictures by Tosca (1704) and Fortea (1738) do not As opposed to the utilitarian eclecticism applied by Ambassador commissioned one of the architects that he reveal very clearly where the large entrance was and Ferreres on the Vich courtyard at a historic moment knew in Rome to design a Renaissance style courtyard there is even some doubt about the position of the when neo-Renaissance language was one of the most for him to build in Valencia on his return in 1521. serliana, because Pizarro’s engraving and Tosca’s plan commonly used for projects, which permits us to know give contradictory information about it. Many the creative freedom practised by this architect in the Embajador Vich Palace compositional and constructional errors may arise in the use of the fragments of a monument, an “unnecessary” The first chronological report of the building of the reconstruction, probably because the documentary intervention on our heritage is proposed for the new palace, situated in the street that bears its name today, research into the architecture of the palace is not expansion of San Pío V, where not even the method dates from 1527. There was no graphic record of it until sufficient but still requires an exhaustive analysis. used in the de-restoration of Saint Sernin in Toulouse is 1704, when we can see it included in the plan of the The coexistence of medieval architecture and admissible. In this case, Viollet-le-Duc’s intervention is city drawn by Tomás Vicente Tosca, in which we can Renaissance fragments is considered intolerable, but the being removed because it is considered technically poor see some of the arcades in the courtyard; in the earlier cohabitation of the latter and the Baroque architecture and aesthetically mediocre; the idea behind this de- street plan by Antonio Mancelli in 1608, only the of the old seminary is deemed permissible when the restoration is to achieve a pure architecture closer to the volume of the palace can be seen. gallery of little arches crowning the four-storey bay original, in the building and on the site restored in the Fortunately there is a study by José Fornés dating from where the courtyard is to be installed will stand out 19th century. 1801, while he was an architecture student at the San clearly for any visitors who raise their eyes to see the As regards the second objective mentioned, the Carlos Fine Arts Academy, consisting of two drawings, upper storeys of the Embajador Vich courtyard, thus assembly of the pieces with ornamental work, it seems one depicts an elevation of a section of the courtyard spoiling the perception of the space, not to mention the that the promoters of this operation consider that only and the perimetral galleries with the ground floor, first difficulty in attaching the new rooms to one of the the cut marble pieces are of any value and the rest is floor and attic (fig. 1), and the other shows details of longer sides of the courtyard. It is undoubtedly an just simple building material, an attitude that would constructional elements and part of the ground floor. A erroneous integration, which, as José Ignacio Casar has suggest that only the heritage built with noble, view of the inside of the courtyard can be seen in an pointed out, contains too many historic transgressions. decorated materials are of interest, as is often engraving dated approximately 1840, which shows the In any case, the aim of this intervention is not to make a demonstrated in restoration works that leave ashlars or Agencia de España printing house, which was located profound criticism of the new insertion project, but brickwork visible. But besides, it is not so easy and in the palace from around 1839. Dating from 1860, one merely to state some doubts about its advantages. This straightforward to recompose and insert these pieces in year after the palace had been demolished, an engraving insertion is made with the intention of being an the expansion works planned, however much support by Cecilio Pizarro published in the magazine El Museo architectural act, but it is not, since it renounces they receive from those previously in charge of the Universal shows us what the portal and the inside of the sophisticated formulas that permit moving fragments, as cultural policy of the Ministry and now dedicated to courtyard may have looked like (fig. 2). in the solutions adopted by the Museo Nacional de Arte other jobs, who radically criticized any other option, de Catalunya (fig. 20). especially those coming from the field of architecture, The Remains of the Palace in the Convento del In conclusion, two issues or objectives are at stake. The which they dubbed as incapable of understanding Carmen first states that the reassembly of the Vich courtyard, historic and artistic phenomena. Heaven will judge The palace was demolished in late 1859, and the marble with a layout similar to the original one when the palace those cultural proposals that invite us to imitate the pieces in the courtyard were saved by members of San was built in 1527, permits people to appreciate and Metropolitan Museum or The Cloisters in New York as Carlos Fine Arts Academy, who placed most of them in enjoy this structure better. The second, that carrying out references to be followed, promising illusions and the Convento del Carmen, which housed the Fine Arts

119 LOGGIA Nº12

Museum at that time. During excavations carried out by from the lintel to the arch like in the Vich courtyard. cation on this subject, Professor Arturo Zaragozá was the archaeologist Fina Marimón in 1999, on the site of In Valencia we can find earlier works than the Vich unable to include this unquestionably unique space in his the demolition of the block of apartments built at the end courtyard in the Resurrection Chapel in the cathedral (c. large repertoire of naves with diaphragm arches because of the 19th century after the palace had been knocked 1515) built out of alabaster, a material found on the from the start it had an upper storey to house the dormito - down, apart from information about the ground plan of facade of Vich Palace during the archaeological excava - ries. Besides, the refurbishment of this Gothic space the palace, one of the alabaster bases of the palace door - tions. The Centelles Palace in Oliva introduced should show greater respect for it, because its use as a way was found, together with some fragments of marble Renaissance forms (1510-1596), and the carving on the gallery for many different sorts of exhibitions has led to from local and Italian quarries. These fragments are con - capitals of the marble columns (figure 11) is very simi - its ashlar diaphragm arches being painted white on the served in the Archaeological Museum. In 1860 the lar, so that the material may have come from the qua - occasion of Valencia Biennial, thus concealing the pain - Academy decided to place six marble columns provisio - rries in Oliva (1520). ted red stars that decorated its voussoirs. nally in the hall leading into the Museum that had been Speaking of reasonable doubt, it is even more difficult set up in the old convent. This operation was carried out to find in an Italian cortile the design of the first floor Reconstruction of the Palace Courtyard by the architect Salvador Escrig. windows of Embajador Vich Palace, which still have Nearly ten years have gone by since I had the opportu - The architect Pascual Sanz Barrera must have known Gothic style foiled mullioned windows, crowned by a nity to study the pieces of the cortile for the dissertation most of the drawings and engravings of the palace Renaissance frieze and spandrel. This transition-style for my Master’s Degree at Valencia Polytechnic courtyard mentioned above, which he used in 1909 to window, no doubt inspired by Embajador Vich Palace, University. During this time the painstaking scientific make the first graphic reconstruction of the courtyard, can also be seen on the Tower on the Generalitat buil - research carried out by Josep Mari Gómez Lozano, with drawings of the facade, a transversal and a longitu - ding, designed by Corbera around 1538. commissioned by the person behind the idea of recupe - dinal section (figure 3). The latter shows a view of the We can find one of several antecedents of the courtyard rating Vich Palace, Professor Miguel Benito Domenech, composition of the lateral gallery of the cloister for the in Italy in Michelozzi’s Medici-Ricardi Palace, built in Director of Valencia Fine Arts Museum, has made it first time. These drawings were perfectly proportioned, Florence between 1440 and 1460 (figure 12). possible to know more about the palace, and thus grant as they were based on drawings by Fornés, which show However, as regards the proportions of the rectangular it the esteem it deserves. a graphic scale in Valencian palmos (a local measure ground plan and the design of the arcades, including the A place has been designed for this purpose in the equivalent to eight inches). In both cases they are per - ornamental details, we must go to Florence, where expansion of the Fine Arts Museum that is being carried fectly true to reality, as was verified later. Sangallo built the Gondi Palace between 1490 and 1501 out by the Ministry of Culture. The architects Luis Ferreres and Francisco Almenar (figure 13). This courtyard has three arches on two of The number of columns to be disassembled and moved must in turn have known Pascual Sanz’s drawings, but the sides and two arches on the others on the ground from the former Convento del Carmen, with their bases, they simply proposed setting up some elements at floor. There are also finely sculpted compound capitals shafts and compound capitals, is eight single (figure 16) ground floor level as museum pieces, and located one at the top of the columns, arches with architrave moul - and four double corner ones (figure 17). All the capitals of the serlianas (figure 4) and the remaining columns ding and foiled ornamentation on the keystone. All of have different decorative motifs. The two false columns that supported the voussoirs of the arches (figure 5) in this is like the Vich courtyard, but without the richness will also be removed to restore the refectory to its origi - the Convento del Carmen, where the City Museum was of the serliana in the smaller galleries or the double nal state. Each column is made up of three marble pie - located at the time. This involved a double architectural columns at the corners. ces, the base, the shaft and the capital, and reaches a distortion, because the solution of the springing of the None of the courtyards of palaces from the same period height of 3.43 m. arches had to be made without the imposts, which was as Embajador Vich in the Valencian Community, such Thirty-four voussoirs form the six semicircular arches, very different from a formal Renaissance solution for as Bechi Palace (Castellón, mid 16th century) or that of including the serliana, with six foliated keystones. viewers and from the proper assembly of the parts and the Condes de Castalla in Onil (Alicante, 1539), are as Of the straight pieces, two lintels of the serliana and the courtyard ground plan proportions, to the extent that exquisite an example of Renaissance architecture as the four imposts will be recuperated. Of the oculi, two two false columns that were not even from the palace Vich courtyard. The former, no longer in existence, had semicircular ones with a foliated keystone and two were inserted and all the pieces were placed on limes - Ionic columns supporting the modulated arches with interior ones (figure 18). All of this makes up a total tone pedestals, thus changing their original height foiled keystones. The latter, an example of transition, of 86 Carrara marble pieces in a good state of repair: (figure 6). The remaining Carrara marble pieces, parti - has moulded arches on quadrangular columns and a all the columns, most of the voussoirs and half the cularly the windows from the first floor, were at best frieze with imposts, over which stood framed Gothic lintels and oculi. stored away. windows like those in the Vich courtyard, but without The remaining marble pieces that survived the demoli - We said that the architectural distortion was double, the upper frieze and pediment (figure 14). tion of the palace, the insertion and the successive chan - because in the second place two very important At the same period Renaissance palace courtyards in ges of location undergone in 142 years are stored in the Valencian Gothic spaces were destroyed (figure 7). The the rest of Spain are not like the one in Embajador Vich grounds of the Museo San Pío V. There are 105 pieces, Chapter Room, whose doorway into the Refectory was Palace, because most of them have arcades both on the mostly parts of the first floor windows (figure 19), the demolished to install the serliana (figure 8), and the ground floor and on the first floor and have a larger imposts of the arches (figure 20), lintels and jambs Refectory itself, where bays were opened between the ground plan. This is the case of the palaces of Cardinal (figure 21) and oculi (figure 22). buttresses to locate the columns and arches, creating new Espinosa (Segovia, 1569), of Orellana Pizarro (Trujillo) The total number of elements, counting the Convento side chapels, totally out of keeping with the closed space or of Zúñiga (Plasencia, 1577), among others. del Carmen and San Pío V, comes to 201 pieces. Since typical of Gothic buildings (figure 9). As far back as after the detailed studies carried out we can conclude 1377 there is data to support the existence of both spaces. Refurbishment of the former Convento del Carmen with a very small margin for error that the cortile was No doubt at the moment when the imposts were inser - Apart from the recuperation, completion and reas - made up of 306 marble pieces, we have, then, 66% of ted, this Monastery of the Carmelite Order, whose cons - sembly which is the main purpose of the works, the dis - the original pieces. truction was initiated in 1281, was quite underestima - mantling of the architectural elements from Embajador We must point out here that this percentage includes all ted. Vich courtyard located in the former Convento del the pieces, including decorative or minor ones (bases of Carmen means reintegrating part of the architectonic lamp holders, imposts, cornices, etc.). As regards the Valuation of Embajador Vich Courtyard space of one of the oldest Gothic structures in the city: major pieces, those with capacity to define the space in The question of whether Embajador Vich courtyard was the old Refectory and the Chapter Room. their own right, like columns, for instance, we actually designed, carved and built by Valencian craftsmen or Now that the Convento del Carmen is being restored as have 96% of the pieces. The same applies to the upper whether everything was brought in from Italy is not the a cultural site (IVAM, 19th century museum), the time windows, because we have 20 (83%) of the 24 arches most important issue. The scientific doubt is difficult to has come to reestablish the typology of the monastery or the coronella that make up the twelve windows and solve and a great deal of research would be necessary to so that its original Gothic design can be better known, 19 (79%) of the 24 jambs required to support these clear it up. Experts on the subject, such as Joaquín studied and admired. arches (figures 23 & 24). Bérchez (Arquitectura Renacentista Valenciana), main - The removal of the imposts from the serliana and We can say then that we have a little over 80% of the tain this doubt. What they all agree on is the architectu - reconstruction of the wall into the Refectory will permit pieces required to support the structure of the courtyard ral quality of the courtyard and the influence it had on the recuperation of the old Chapter Room, so the sealed in its original form, permitting a reading of the rhythms the most important buildings at the time. door connecting it with the cloister must be reopened established between the bays and the masses of the four The books by Serlio and Palladio, in 1537 and 1570 and restored. The disassembly of the columns and the walls of the interior facades. respectively, were too late to provide a Serlian-style arches from Vich Palace attached to the north wall of The information we have about the four galleries ground plan; but similar carving to this can be found in the refectory and the reintegration of the pisé-de-terre surrounding the courtyard on the ground floor tells us classical architecture since early times (Temple of panels that stood between the ashlar buttresses supporting that they were covered by closed groin vaults following Hadrian, in Ephesus, C2, figure 10). Here we can see the roof will restore it to its outstanding role in Valencian the rhythm set by the arches and lintels of the serliana how the moulding on the architraves runs uninterrupted Gothic Architecture (figure 15). In his magnificent publi - (figure 25). We have no information as to how the walls

120 ENGLISH VERSION of the courtyard were made, although we deduce they tion, was performed on the tiniest and often almost corner between the two floors), in the Rufer, Moller and were about 40 cm thick. imperceptible details. The recuperation of colour in the Müller houses, it is included in the interior layout in a There are no remains of the windows on the upper floor interior decoration helped destroy the myth that considers much more elegant and refined way. or attic that can be seen in the different drawings, so we Modernism as essentially monochromatic, due to the The 2:3 relationship of the interior spaces of Villa Müller imagine that they did not have any marble decorations. black and white photographs of the time. Interference and has made us understand that two superimposed spaces at The ground plan of the courtyard, including the new elements were avoided as much as possible, with the the front of the house (living room and bedroom) corres - columns, would have been a rectangle of approximately exception of current safety measures and maintenance pond at the back with three levels (hall, dining room or 9.10 m by 11.90 m, so the dimensions with the perime - requirements. The event of importance to all mankind bed and dressing room above); this layout was not only tral galleries, without taking into account the thickness culminated in an opening ceremony in May 2000. remarked upon by Loos himself but also by his contem - of the outer walls, would have been a rectangle of 15.30 poraries (H. Kulka). It corresponded to the initial layout, m by 18.10 m. The cornice around the inner courtyard Prague and Adolf Loos conditioned, above all, by the economy of space in the would have been about 14 m high. The mythical, suggestive personality of Adolf Loos is a dwelling, as has often been commented, rather than the most appropriate subject to help understand certain constructional logic of the actual building. Conclusions principles proclaimed by 20th century architecture. But The concept of space is also influenced by other featu - Architecture is not a more or less desirable set of ele - what is so fascinating about this man’s architectonic res typical of Anglo-Saxon architecture: niches with ments. Architecture is not theories, history, drawings or creation so highly praised by whole generations of con - hand-made brick fireplaces, dining rooms illuminated projects. Architecture is spaces, exterior and interior, temporary and subsequent architects? Is he one of those by large windows... The composition of the materials, light and shade, mass and gaps; something that can be characters whose work has been glorified in order to see the natural surfaces and craftsmanship in the true sense felt, experienced, transmitted and passed down. For all them differently from what they really were? Don’t we of the word confirm the traditional aspect of its concep - of this it requires at least a form, a dimension, a colour, let ourselves be carried away by the schemes of tion, even at the cost of a certain camouflage imitating a texture and even a temperature. Modernist thinking? the structure of the architectonic elements. Columns, The columns and arches of Embajador Vich Palace Adolf Loos has left us an oeuvre that is hardly unders - pilasters, beams lose their raison d’être here to become Courtyard were built to join an interior space with the tood but sells well, superbly covered by the media, with decorative elements accentuating the spatial freedom exterior, so that the action of the light and the rain an air of rebellion and non-conformity with his context and transparency, with the exception of a door into a would roll smoothly over the whiteness of the marble and his period. It is an article nicely handled by avant- single room. (figure 26). The fine carving on the different capitals garde clichés that exalt values that are now greatly stan - The sophisticated relationship between the different and the flower petals on the intrados of the voussoirs dardized. With the exception of the Goldman and levels of this almost Palladian space of the place occu - were designed to be seen. Salatsch Building (now Raiffeisenbank), he only built pied by the relatively narrow staircase is enhanced even The opportunity of recuperating an architecture of villas and apartment blocks. His theoretical work is far more in Dr Frantisek Müller’s villa, where we find a which we have few samples in our area, and even fewer from abundant, but it stands out for its unity of vision minimalist space on several levels that is a ladies’ bou - testimonies of the samples that did exist, justifies this dealing with the everyday and “insignificant” problems doir. A similar solution can be seen at Villa Moller in intervention sufficiently. It is necessary to seek the lost of a society that Loos considered sick. Its interest today Vienna, where the same space is located inside the ante - essence of an almost obsolescent architecture in order to resides in the fact that he not only attracted the attention chamber of the master bedroom. To judge from the discover its initial meaning. What is missing here is the of personalities of the avant-garde in the interwar years, sketches of Loos’s false ceiling and the intersection of “function”. But although the Ambassador no longer but post-modern architects still consider him to be a faith - false lemon wood beams, as well as a view through a lives in the palace, we can at least see the way in which ful follower of Anglo-Saxon tradition and, mainly, a con - geometrically articulated window looking on to the he took a portion of outer space to add to his new man - formist architect who bowed to his clients’ wishes. These living room (according to recent investigation, it was a sion (figure 27). architects tend to find references to support their theory in sliding sash window), it was part of the most extreme his apparently rebellious work. conception of a spatial mini-plan (mini-Raumplan) not It is a great honour for the city of Prague that Adolf Loos without a certain amount of artistic deformation. The should have left his masterpiece there, a building of small contrast between the movement of traffic and the still - Petr Urlich dimensions that nevertheless summarizes all the princi - ness of rest is forced at this point to the user’s accep - Adolf Loos’ Villa For Dr Muller In ples put into practice in his earlier buildings: the villa of tance limit. Prague And Its Authenticity the engineer Dr F. Müller, head of the Kapsa & Müller Even in a situation like the one where, with Hermann As far as restoration is concerned, the most famous company. One might almost say that this house is made Kulka, he was faced with the problem of “helping the building designed by Adolf Loos with Karel Lhota’s up of quotations from his own work in the sense that he less privileged social classes to live in decent dwe - invaluable aid is one of the most exemplary illustrations uses the principle of the spatial plan (the famous llings” at the Werkbund Exposition in Vienna –which of the method that should be followed in the preserva - Raumplan), which, from the user’s point of view, is not a essentially involved investigating minimum dwelling tion of 20th century architectural monuments. The res - cleverly drawn up master plan but a superb ornament of quarters– he managed to create “airy houses with a toration of this work, unique in its conception of space human habitat often devoid of any practical use. large hall, a gallery and a big bathroom inside” but they (Raumplan) and the characteristic design of its interiors, The “classic correctness” of Loos’s revolutionary ideas were presented as the most expensive! was undertaken by a group of architects and restorers (Ornament and crime, etc....) is clearly reflected in his Nevertheless, it is necessary to emphasize the fact that with the intention of preserving an extraordinary docu - way of conceiving a house as an object that does not Loos always attached greater importance to the require - ment of the 20th century and maintaining the gesamt - usually have a univocal relationship between the outside ments of the prospective inhabitants of his houses than kunstwerk (total art work) as authentic as possible. and the inside but, on the contrary, is expressed in an was apparent at first sight. This type of declaration in This task on the historic villa, with the collaboration of absolutely contradictory manner. The exterior, free from favour of the client has become an inseparable part of a large range of experts and specialists, gave rise to the ornaments, conserves traces and schemes of classical all post-modern interpretations of his practical and theo - drawing up of a method that made it possible to investi - composition (strongly underlined symmetry; there is, retical work. gate the current possibilities of the building. In 1997, however, a certain tension accompanying an apparently This explains perfectly well Loos’s often surprising when preparations for restoration began with in-depth complicated, disorderly interior space). colourful interiors. Apart from the colours of natural research and examination of all the documentation on This relatively complicated interior space does not go materials, among which we can point out especially the building, the conclusion drawn was, paradoxically, beyond the limits of the convention of principles and Loos’s favourite veined marble (cipolin –brilliantly that thanks to the old regime the building had been kept traditions of the English house and more than once the applied, for example, in the interior of the Salon du in an extraordinarily good state of repair. A meticulous singular details are reminiscent of the Palladian apart - Prince [Knize] in the Champs Elysées in Paris and, of digital inventory of all the elements of the building con - ments in similar New York or Chicago buildings. The course, in Villa Müller) and dark mahogany, much firmed this fact. For that reason, overall restoration definition of a dwelling endowed with a specific deter - brighter colours can be found in his houses, with a pre - works were initiated, working in most cases with histo - mination for the height of each room, depending on its dominance of violet (upholstery), bright red (linoleum), ric elements and materials and, in the case of missing function and importance, is no more than an extraordi - blue and yellow (oil paints, on walls and furniture). parts or elements, the painstaking reconstruction (the nary play of artistic connections, often resolved without The exclusive character of a residence, according to landscaping of the garden was carried out according to any logical relationship with the structure. The funda - Loos, does not consist of using exceptional and original the original plans) or replacement of missing parts by mental definition of the room is univocally linked to the details but rather in taking advantage of standard pro - studying catalogues and other buildings of the same English entrance hall (Vorraum), which has gradually ducts of the time and certain principles declared almost period, now mostly demolished. invaded the interior layout. Whereas in the Villa Karma the same year (1930) by F. L. Wright in his lectures at Direct reconstruction through the examination of the indi - (Clarens, Montreux, 1903-06) or the Strasser House Princeton, where he expounded the nine points of the vidual spaces in the building and the furniture, based on (Vienna), this hall is developed with a descriptive capa - house on the prairie, closer to the traditional idea of the old plans but, above all, on photographic documenta - city similar to the original (a two flight staircase in the human habitat that those presented by Le Corbusier at

121 LOGGIA Nº12 that time on the occasion of the proclamation of the (Rukschcio, B., Schachel, R, A. Loos, Leben und Werk, furniture still in existence (Jana Hornekova in collabora - open floor plan. For example, the integration of techni - Residenz Verlag, Salzburg 1987) and visited all the tion with Prague City Museum). cal installations and furniture, eliminating the role of the refurbished buildings by Loos in Vienna (the Loos Finally, some changes in restoration took place during interior decorator (points 8 to 10) is the principle about Building or Goldman and Salatsch department stores, the works, related particularly to plaster applied to using standard industrial products of the time applied to now the Raiffeisenbank, and the Steiner, Scheu and wood, which was performed by following the original Villa Müller. Moller houses). methods and the typical system of connected bands. A much remarked advantage of the Prague masterpiece is In April of that same year, a detailed inventory of the The asphalt surface of the roof terrace was also resto - that all the furnishings are still practically intact. building was drawn up by Petr Urlich, Martina red. The rest of the works stood out mainly for the least Paradoxically, thanks to the Communist period, but also Fantysova, Richard Cibik (the inventory computer pro - possible destruction and the greatest respect combined thanks to a few notabilities (E. Poche...), even details gramme), Miroslava Svrek and Eva Svecova, in colla - with the preservation of the original features, including such as light switches, lamps, and other accessories inclu - boration with the Girsa studio. Thanks to its meticulous, the technical infrastructure of the building. Karel ding all the integrated furniture have been saved. The ori - systematic format, presented at the final stage on CD Ksandr was in charge of the supervision on behalf of ginal technical installations, usually absent from Loos’s ROM, the inventory was adopted as the basis for carr - the State Institute for the Preservation of Monuments. works (compare for example with those by Dr Lhota, ying out the project, which was completed in July of the The entire works came to an end in the first half of Villa Winternitz in Prague, Na Cihlárce and the Viennese same year. The Girsa studio, Vaclav Girsa and Miloslav 2000 with the inauguration ceremony that opened the villas, currently occupied) are real museum pieces. Hanzl worked on it together with Vitrzslava Ondrejova villa to the public. No doubt the last advantage of Prague is the fact that Dr (garden), Jiri Hosek from the Construction Faculty of Müller’s house is not lived in; that is why it has main - Czech Polytechnic University (building materials, Conclusion tained the authentic appearance it had in its day, even at bricks, plaster...) and Zden Kutnar (insulation) from the The restoration of a monument of modern architecture the cost of certain non-functional elements and with Faculty of Architecture of the same university. Besides, today is a problem involving partial judgements and minimum modern alterations. Thus the public has during this period, Vladimir Uher and Ladislav Bezd decisions on determined aspects (an analysis-synthesis access to a building that is a splendid sample of the era made a comprehensive photographic report on the buil - solution). It is based on several starting points: –undoubtedly often overestimated and contradictory– of ding and its surroundings, and film director Petr Ruttner 1. Above all, a kind of myth has arisen, the myth of the Modernism in its remarkably individualist and traditio - (AD Film) and cameraman Andrej Barla made a film Modern movement and it has become a fetish. In the nal expression. showing the initial state of the villa at the same time, first place, then, a sober, material and demythicizing with the cooperation of Vaclav Girsa, Petr Urlich and view must be achieved. In this particular case this was A Short Report on the Restoration and Karel Ksandr. done to perfection. The discovery of the variety of Refurbishment Works All the preliminary tasks and the project were now bright colours (related as regards period to neo-plasti - From 1996 Prague City Museum, which administrates complete. The character of the restoration works had cism), traditional furniture (Chippendale from the Gerstl the building owned by the city of Prague, carried our been defined in a precise, methodical manner, based on company) and the deliberate “falseness” of details fas - the overall refurbishment of Villa Müller and its gar - the intention of preserving the authenticity of the hioned in wood or stone pillars confirmed the someti - dens so that it could open to the public in May 2000 ensemble to the greatest possible extent, from a cons - mes distorted view of 20th century architecture. as a jewel of modern architecture showing us the tructional, architectonic and environmental point of 2. Knowledge of monuments is an issue that requires work of a world-famous architect as it was when it view and of conserving the existing materials, elements professional methodological research and consistent was first made. and general furnishings and the original furniture. The preliminary studies that make it possible to compile a 1. Research constructional changes were kept to a minimum. The virtual image of the original building. Digital viewing In 1996 the history of the construction of the building garden project, based on the documentation of the plans of the construction paradoxically implies the possibility was studied in detail by two teams, one headed by Petr conserved for the overall refurbishment of the villa, of reconstructing the building as it was originally, using Urlich with staff members from the Faculty of involved total reconstruction, on the one hand, and original materials, where necessary in different loca - Architecture of Czech Polytechnic University and the afforded a unique chance of reproducing the sort of gar - tions. This is one of the absurdities in the discipline of other by Karel Ksandr, made up of professionals from den in vogue in the thirties, on the other. monument restoration. These possibilities are reaching the State Institute for the Preservation of Prague During the preliminary stages of the restoration, many their peak at the present time. Monuments (SÚPP). These two teams found out many national and international experts were consulted. 3. The conservation (authenticity) of the work is closely hitherto unpublished facts and compiled all the photo - Anyone who showed an interest in the project was linked to this aspect. It is sometimes necessary to cho - graphic documents and historic plans from Milada immediately informed of the initial state of the villa. ose between making a replacement (it often happens Müllerová’s estate that is conserved in the files of the The knowledge of other architects, art historians, that elements must be taken from other constructions or Artistic Industrial Museum in Prague. museum curators and contemporary witnesses was buildings of the same period) or a replica of the origi - Once these separately commissioned surveys were invaluable for the authors of the restoration project. The nal. The latter option is the more expensive. The origi - completed (early in 1997), a competition was held in extraordinary interest shown by Leslie van Duzer of nality of the building as a whole is the first factor to be 1997 and won by Girsa AT studio. At this point in time, Arizona University, USA, who visited Prague in July taken into account when evaluating the wisdom of such nothing stood in the way of drawing up the project and 1998 and found out all she could about the conception steps. initiating the preliminary studies for the total restoration of the project, led to her ensuing cooperation in it. 4. The pragmatism of the period can also be seen here of Loos’s villa. In September 1998 a competition for the restoration of somehow. Preservation of authenticity requires impai - 2. The Project all the furniture in the building was held. The Restorers ring several parts (which is seldom acceptable to an The decision to present the villa as a historic monument Association, represented by Vaclav Mikule and specia - architect) that may cause the dysfunction of elements naturally had a great influence on the overall approach list sponsor Vera Müllerova, were selected. that play an otherwise useful and suggestive role in the to restoring it. In December 1997 a study for the resto - 3. Works building. This attitude may be upheld to prevent possi - ration and refurbishment of the villa containing the Works started on 23rd November 1998 with the over - ble abuse or to achieve authenticity at any cost. general outline of the methodology to be applied at the hauling of the building’s heating system, including the Nevertheless, the historic building will remain as an different work stages, along with the restoration and repair of the gas connection, the prudent location of the artefact –a historic subject in itself. This is the approach constructional alterations to be made. Its authors were boilers in the laundry room in the basement (the old to adopt. Vaclav Girsa, , Miroslav Hanzl and Petr Urlich, with the Strebl boilers will be included in the exhibition of the 5. This approach results in very expensive works. collaboration of Vitrzslava Ondrejova (reconstruction of components of the building’s technical facilities) and In the case of Villa Müller these points were followed the garden). connection to the radiator network. From this date for - exactly. However, the question remains that this appro - This study was followed by an application for planning ward and during the months that followed, flooring, ach is absolutely not a model of the ideal attitude or permission submitted 31st January 1998, whose authors stairs and pavements (tiles, etc.) were repaired and res - method for restoring monuments of the modern move - were Vaclav Girsa, Miroslav Hanzl and Vitrzslava tored, and some elements were dismantled according to ment! Why? Ondrejova. Planning permission was granted 14th May the detailed plans. There is and there is not a simple answer to this ques - 1998. In the meantime, on 18th March the restoration At the same time, research was commenced into the tion. The simple answer suggests that a monument project was debated at the State Institute for the different crafts involved in the detailed restoration actually becomes a monument when it demonstrates Preservation of Prague Monuments and one week later, works (carpentry, upholstery, stonecutting, wallpape - above all, thanks to its reputation, the high degree of on 25th March 1998, it was discussed at an assembly of ring, glass, ceramics). Apart from this, work was conti - knowledge and skill of the experts who worked on it. Prague City Council. At the beginning of April, the aut - nued to turn the monument into a museum (Petr Kraj í The construction is a matter of prestige and this men - hors, conservators and the executive staff of the from the National Technical Museum archives in colla - tally becomes part of the cost. In other words, this cons - museum went to Vienna, where they met Dr B. boration with Prague City Museum) and to condition truction work is a good thing in itself. This aspect Rukschcio, the author of a book about Adolf Loos the interiors of the villa with the identification of the potentially has an educational value that can be used as

122 ENGLISH VERSION an important attraction in a museum piece (since it we find on the road on approaching from Valencia is the in the late 15th or early 16th century. attracts not only specialists but the general public too). land and its wall and then the back of the farmhouse. The fabrics, the finish, even the luxury that we find in The more complex answer has to do with the other side The walls of the fabrics of the building and those the house mark a breakaway from its origin and are in of the range of possibilities of use, especially the reco - surrounding the property are unified by the whitewash keeping with the powerful Valencian society of the late very of the relationship between builder –often the new covering them, which provides a double reading: 15th century, enriched by trade across the nearby proprietor– and architect (a specialist in monuments unitary from one viewpoint, but textured, changing and Mediterranean Sea, and about to begin its decline like which most are not). That is to say, the building’s return diverse as we approach it. the Crown of Aragon itself. The large rooms, the to life, its chance to be used and lived in. Complications After the walls with the remains of pisé-de-terre, with windows with festejadors (window seats), the arise not only in the basic points of the ground plan and more or less coherent fragments of late medieval brick, flamboyant plaster arches, the projecting staircases with the ensuing changes in construction and dimensions but, where we can see traces of slightly pointed arches and the design of the steps marked on the masonry banister, above all, in technical problems. As can be seen, if the some ashlars at the corners, we find the remains of a the polychromy on the timber work and the tiled floors, preservation of the architecture of the Modern move - large cut stone gateway leading into the farm, which all the tradition of civil Gothic can be found in this rural ment has great shortcomings, the battle is far from won. was turned into an oil mill during the last century. We architecture not only physically close to the city of are welcomed by a very old, tall, sturdy olive tree Valencia but complementing the architecture to be whose ancient trunk stands alongside the house, behind found inside the city, thus clearly illustrating that rural which we come upon what used to be a courtyard and urban are merely different episodes of the same J. Miguel del Rey Aynat surrounded by a series of buildings dating from the history, the history of architecture. Reflections about an Intervention: early 20th century and paved with large reddish cobble The fact that this is a hybrid work of uncertain origin the Alquería de Barrinto in Valencia stones. Here we find some Modernist buildings, erected and poor typology, a rather unusual case for rural during the refurbishment of the old farm in 1914. architecture, makes the intervention take certain courses The Alquería and the Historic Memory of Underneath the cast iron and the plaster corbels with very different from the norm by systematizing the basic Cultivated Lands their many coats of whitewash we can still detect a house type that the architecture makes reference to. In The alquería is part of the remains of rural culture compact volume with bays corresponding to different this case we sought the possible typical episode of the conserved on the grounds of Marxalenes Park, constructional logic, to levels no longer in existence architecture and emphasized the plastic and expressive following a new, perhaps still hesitant, policy put into today, which tell the tale of the passage of time and the capacity of the spaces it defines; we assessed the fabrics practice by Valencia Council to preserve traces of the permanence of memories. Around the rest of the that constitute it and the elements it contains, thus city’s construction. The old farm, broken up by different courtyard we find other, cleaner volumes of good brick striving to create a discourse that would be valid in its interventions into several separate parts, has been fabric, corresponding to the oil mill, and on the storey own right, and at the same time coherent with history, restored for new cultural and ludic uses, permitting an above there is a modern peanut oil mill that was keeping fragments of other phases, traces that, apart approximate although not unitary reading of an possibly never used. On the ground a slightly elevated, from the value of antiquity, can give us the emotional ensemble that has taken on different shapes and uses in meandering path leads to the courtyard and crosses it, substance proper to any architecture seen from a accordance with the changes in agricultural economy with the historic Rascanya irrigation ditch underneath. modern perspective. We did not search for validation of over six hundred years. These are the remains of a country landscape that reveal its documentary character, another asset indeed, but of The intervention on the main farm building is based on a way of life and a culture rooted in the land. The new its own forms, of the tectonic of the fabrics and the the research carried out at Valencia University by the landscape is different. We now have an urban park with construction material, the quality of its craftsmanship, Paisar group of Rural Landscape Gardening and certain elements of its rural origins. There are fragments the way architecture handles matter and technique at a Architecture, focused above all on the study of rural that stand side by side with other logical ones, which moment in history, the quality of the spaces constructed. architecture in Valencia and particularly on the analyses even have other uses, but allow us to see the land and recuperation of the type of house found in the without erasing traces, so that our memory can create a The 15th Century, an Attractive Period in Alquería Valencian countryside carried out thanks to an new collective image to store. In the general design of Building agreement between the University and the City Council. the park an excess of fragmentation breaks up the old Country houses built in the 14th century have a plain These studies have provided detailed insight into the rural factory and turns what was once a single unit into spatial lay-out that already contain the basic different types of houses built over the years, detailing the house (the Alquería de Barrinto), the vegetable construction volumes that we find over the years, three the most interesting buildings and furnishing garden, the oil mill, the driveway, the courtyard, etc... bodies perpendicular to the driveway, one of which, the documentation of those that are no longer standing. The The irrigation ditch disappeared like all our historic south one, is longer than the others. A one-storey house elevations, detailed analyses, series of houses belonging irrigation ditches, to be swallowed up by the Plutonian with a slightly hipped roof, almost flat, sloping towards to different types, classification according to time, along underworld dominion. Our project concentrates on the the road, on the opposite side from the main entrance with a specific follow-up of the buildings of undeniable restoration of the old farmhouse and the adaptation of facade. At the end of the 15th century it underwent value still in existence, facilitating their restoration with part of it to house the municipal library. important transformation works to form the architecture historic documentation, drawing attention to their state that still exists in general terms, apart from small of neglect in many cases but always highlighting a Intervention on Buildings changes in the 18th and 19th centuries and an important culture destined to rapid declining unless a change of Building on top of buildings always involves making a subdivision and the transformation of its outside mentality can be brought about, form part of the line of series of decisions whose complexity and heterogeneity appearance in the 20th. Around the year 1500 the thought that advocates the permanence of traces of the make it difficult to reconstruct the logic of the building was radically structured in several levels. The past in the construction of the new city and even intervention and even more so to mark a clear and perimeter of the house was stabilized by expanding the considers it an essential condition of modernity. explicit linear process to follow. The memory of a west boundary to the drive and the three original bodies A Real Landscape and a Landscape in the Mind. previously existing landscape with its own particular were conserved, consolidating the L-of the ground plan That broken, fragmented landscape, taken straight out image and sensorial experience influenced on the work right from the start. of a rural background and laid in the outskirts of the performed. Just as research on rural architecture is The new layout consists of a ground floor containing city, stuck in people’s mind. Situated in Marxalenes, being developed in a general way and being applied to the farming installations with a noble floor upstairs over between the station of the old trenet (local electric train) certain buildings to set the memory of the slow the south body where the main reception rooms are to and the current tramway line, until very recently we transformation process mentioned by Aloïs Riegl in his be found. Large, plain rooms with big windows flanked could see the vestiges of the old road known as the essay titled “Modern Cult to Monuments”,* that interest by festejadors with small plasterwork doorways camí dels Montanyana, to the east of which there stood that is present in the evolutionary chain surrounding connecting them to each other. There is a short staircase a series of buildings that included an old oil-mill, history and whose most interesting moments must be leading up to these rooms from the large entrance hall warehouses, the boundary walls and the remains of an recorded, the ones that show us the general trend, downstairs, a very high space with polychrome beams old farmhouse. A sign saying aceitera was a reminder of without losing the object value of the form, the giving on to the rest of the farmhouse: the kitchens, the an old farm industry. This was the last transformation of uniqueness of each building, its fabrics and spaces. main reception rooms, the service quarters, the farming a historic farmhouse that has adapted to the changing areas and even a wine press and cellar, possibly dating economies and cycles connected with the land and Project Option from the 15th century, which were quite a find. Stairs farming since the 14th century. The planimetric charts and archaeological studies and doorways at different levels, fragments of old The course of the camí dels Montanyana is flanked by provide us with a certain amount of information about structures, traces of closed arches, open arches, the walls around the west of the farm and the adjacent the forms and allow us to make a logical interpretation loopholes, vents, all form an internal universe of quite fields. It is sinusoidal and narrow in shape, wedged of the chain of transformations that take place in a fascinating complexity. between the walls and the unevenness of the ground, country house, built in a rather haphazard fashion in the The treatment of space of that period has a flavour of its which begins to face west at this point. The first thing 14th century and converted into a sumptuous farmhouse own, where arches play a major role with the weight of

123 LOGGIA Nº12 the big masses of pisé-de-terre walls leaning on them. carpentry and wrought iron railings. The link with as it is possible to eliminate or emphasize the Strong lines of wall but very much perforated at the technology, with industry is a condition that I think we constructional actions on the basis of all the bottom by arches of very different shapes and sizes, should never relinquish at any point in history, so in this constructional actions performed. pointed, semi-circular, basket-handle, highly complex new millennium the alquería building begins to make Since it was first built in the early 14th century, the flamboyant Gothic plasterwork that show an almost use of contemporary materials that help it along on its Alquería de Barrinto was conceived as a large Byzantine taste in the treatment of space. way through history: concrete in its fabrics, in its new agricultural business with 8 cahizadas of arable land, There are coherent fragments from other periods staircases, and stainless steel in windows and that is to say, a surface of about 48 fanegadas or 3.98 conserved in the 15th to 16th century architecture that installations, materials placed in situ, very much in hectares, a member of the reduced group of holdings we have taken as a reference for the restoration, such as keeping with rural type construction methods. with the largest extension in the built heritage of the the kitchen dating from the early 19th century, a fully- Valencian countryside. The reconstruction made of the equipped, well-conserved rural kitchen with a good original ground plan (phase 1) consists of a buildings example of a fireplace and a splendid domestic made up of two bays parallel to the facade and giving on hydraulic system in excellent condition. Remains of late Victor Algarra to three transversal bodies. It could be included in the medieval staircases, together with fragments of 18th La Alquería de Barrinto category of farmhouses with a basilica-like floor plan, century ones. But above all there are traces of times Archaeological Investigation although the main entrance is not through the central bay gone by or even modern times: arches, lintels, but the facade is made up of two independent bays, in the fragments of walls. No building remains unchanged over the years. Those form of a portico with pointed arches that lead into the of us who work on the recuperation and conservation of other bodies. The System. Metrics and Matter architectural heritage are well aware of this fact. Around the end of the 14th century or the beginning of The intervention on the alquería attempts to achieve a The initial idea for the composition of a building, made the 15th (phase 2), new bodies were added on to one of rather ambiguous play: to conserve a unitary reading, to fill the specific requirements of certain people at a the old facade bodies and the three transversal ones not breaking the thread of history, always remaining at a given moment, may no longer be valid after even a were enlarged, so that the building practically doubled general level, while enhancing the value of certain single generation. We must add to this the inevitable in size. This was a token of its importance, which was objects at the same time, which involves a certain repairs needed to maintain the structures, mainly of the at its greatest around 1490-1500, at the dawn of the amount of good taste in the treatment of detail. We tried roofs and fabrics, both exposed to the degrading action Renaissance (phase 3). to solve this duality by means of an at times radical, of natural elements, especially water. At this time the farmhouse added a new function to the unprejudiced intervention that such a great In the Alquería de Barrinto, a historic farmhouse some merely agricultural ones and the housing of farmhands transformation obliged us to follow, striving to make 650 years old, time and the people who have lived and by building on a series of noble rooms for the owners, this a new, although different phase, but at the end of worked in it have left on its walls the marks of many the Figuerola family (Lords of Náquera since the late the day just one more phase in this architecture that has operations that reveal the constant use and 16th century). changed radically in its use, so that it will cease to be transformation of its structures. Without getting rid of the old structures, the interior just a farmstead and become a building of value in its In this type of rural building, the permanent change of space of the house was redesigned, often with partition own right, a building whose main function from now on compositional structure that its spaces are submitted to is walls, to produce something similar to a late medieval will be to evoke a certain relationship with the land, to even more evident. An alquería is above all a building for urban palace. try and recall the ancient links of man with the earth a farm and that involves not only a place to shelter a The two lateral bodies on the ground floor were and its produce. more or less extensive farming family but a centre for reserved as a service and production area and kitchen, We took into account two basic points in this housing both the tools and the farm animals and storing with a seller for making wine, made up of two large intervention: metrics and matter. The former, to help us the crops. circular tanks lined with tiles for crushing and pressing gauge the scale and proportions. The use of matter, But a farmhouse could contain other spaces with grapes that decant into two smaller square tanks. economizing means, limiting ourselves to a single different functions besides these. In the Alquería de Two independent one-flight stairs lead up to the rooms material for the new fabrics and for the reinforcements Barrinto as well as its function as a country dwelling, a in the noble dwelling on the mezzanine. Many elements and extradoses of old walls in a precarious state of store for tools and crops and a stable for the livestock, that have been found bear witness to the great luxury of repair, facilitated our working freely with the rest of the the farmhouse had installations for the production or these building works. There are two curtain-type doors materials and finishing certain elements in the necessary processing of certain farm produce, such as the seller or with scalloped convex arches and a door with an ogee detail, but without putting into practice the dubious wine press to make wine and, in this particular case, arch decorated with plaster tracery, part of whose crown custom of using contemporary methods and materials lordly dwelling quarters located on the mezzanine floor. is conserved. for details, which results in the refurbishment taking on Such a variety of uses, together with such very different Two large pavements of Manises azulejos combined a more predominant role than the object being restored. farming and domestic customs throughout historic with plain floor tiles have been conserved, almost We used the logic of classical Valencian measurements, periods like the low Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the unique pieces as regards late medieval Valencian which has been a great asset in the reading of the Baroque or Capitalism, involved constant adjustment of pavements. One of them is made up of “Gothic rose” existing architecture as well as in the actual restoration. the farmhouse structures. azulejos with octagonal tiles, located in the room By using Valencian measurements, we sought the traces From a refurbishment point of view, the continual believed to have been a drawing room or the main of the first levels of the old framework, working on evolution of the buildings implies a complex starting dining room, and the second of “mitalat” type azulejos heights of 3.61 m, 16 Valencian palmos, or 4 varas, point taking into account the great accumulation of with star-shaped decorations combined with square measurements frequently found in the construction of constructional actions. During the phase of preliminary tiles, located in the cambra or bedroom and the room late medieval dwelling spaces in Valencia. This studies, the archaeological analysis of the mural beside it, which we could classify as a recambra or permitted us to make exact readings in a complex stratigraphy was carried out to order this series of dressing room. building, very much altered over the years. In the same constructional operations, some affecting the structure Besides there are windows with the typical festejadors way, we were able to discover the width of the and others, mere repair works, but all making a loud (window seats) and an excellent sample of artistic loadbearing walls, usually two feet or 45.2 cm, built “noise” that can sometimes prevent attaining an overall carpentry with two carved polychrome modillions, one with bricks of 31.6 cm to generate bonds a foot and a knowledge of the building. of which conserves on the front part the image of a man half wide. The width of old doors, 4, 6 or 8 palmos, In the case of the Alquería de Barrinto, an with a goatee beard. The sides and lower part of this gives us a width of 1.81 m. archaeological study was performed principally on the modillion are decorated with plant motifs, and the The concrete mouldings, like the plank moulding of old walls of the building in order to discover its ornamentation of what we interpret to be the brocade of pisé-de-terre walls, measure one Valencian palmo, architectural evolution. By determining the stratigraphic the character’s clothes is outstanding. This piece which provides a unitary scale for the whole system, relationships of before, after and simultaneous belongs to Flemish Gothic style, which was very much accentuated in the measurements of stairs, window constructional actions, it is possible to reconstruct the in vogue in Valencia between the second quarter and the bays, girder interspaces, etc. interaction between them, so that we obtain their end of the 15th century. It follows the patterns Slightly tinted white concrete is the only material used complete “depositional” sequence in the walls of the elaborated, among others, by Joan Reixach (active from for the new fabrics and, as we said above, it resolves building. The study of constructional techniques and the 1431 to 1486) and his circle. In the final decades of the wall reinforcements and extradoses. Conserving, materials used and the architectural styles will provide 15th century and the early 16th, which is the point restoring or adding new designs or replicas, depending data to enable the dates of the works to be ascertained. where we date these modillions, “Flemish” style was on each case, the rest of the materials to be found in the In this way the different building phases the farmhouse still very popular in works like those of the Master of existing architecture are: pisé-de-terre, brick fabrics, has been submitted to were determined, along with the Perea or even in those of Vicente Macip before 1525. arches, lintels, ashlar masonry, timber girders, brick scope of the works each time. Thanks to this In the centuries that followed other expansion or repair partition walls, clay, pebble or tiled floors, timber knowledge, it is easier to decide on a restoration model, works were performed on the farmhouse, some of

124 ENGLISH VERSION which were of great importance, such as those carried more or less square ground plan, of similar dimensions and which had to be maintained for different functional out in 1696 (phase 4), as we know from examining a and situated along the Cuesta de la Cárcel. This sloping reasons. The criterion followed was based on their document conserved in the Archive of the Kingdom of 19th century street originally led to a small medieval conception as light objects leaning on the old masonry Valencia. At this time “per la continuació de les aigües square –called the Fielato (Pointer) square, in reference to and granting transparency between the main entrance esta inhabitable y amenasa la total ruyna... Y de altre the pointer of the municipal scales in the Lonja– on the and the back facade. In this way it is possible to read manera no pot continuar dit requirent (tenant Josep same level as the entrance to the Lonja. The project these elements almost as “furniture” contained within a Montesinos) en lo arrendament pués no té part segura drawn up by Magro and Del Rey recovers the urban large architectonic space. With this in view, their hon habitar en dita casa ni menys hon posar los fruyts”. design of the portico by reconstructing the little square opaque walls were replaced by a light and visually This state of ruin was due to an important flood that took where the old Fielato square used to be. The creation of transparent architecture even though timber and stone place in Valencia on 30th December 1695. Logically the horizontal plane of the square makes it possible to were used. Nonetheless, the differential treatment given enough, the works concentrated on rebuilding many perceive the true scale of the ogival arches, except for the to these materials both from a constructive and a walls and replacing the roofs in large areas of the farm. opening hidden by the buttress added during the technological viewpoint allows us to separate them At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the Renaissance. The sloping approach was a contemporary perfectly easily from the original Gothic fabric. 19th (phase 5), when the property had passed down to situation that distorted the reading of the building. In conclusion, this is an intervention that respects all the Marqueses de Boil, repairs were carried out on the As a public space, Lonjas have a longstanding tradition the historic stages of the building, carried out in an fabrics, once again because of damage caused by water along the Mediterranean coast and the territories of the entirely aseptic manner, avoiding all stylistic manias (in 1819 the farm was inundated when the Rascaña old Crown of Aragón contain many buildings of this and phobias. At the same time the lack of archaeologist irrigation ditch flooded over). type. In the case in question, there is influence of the considerations facilitates an overall reading of the The last chapter of the story, before its recent Tortosa Lonja in the design of the arches mentioned building’s history. Even the dual character of the refurbishment, was when a section of the south wing of above and that of Perpignan in that it was used as a monument as a Town Hall and Court of Justice has the farmhouse was turned into a group of dwellings as Casa de Consell. In any case it is a diaphanous been given a suitable coherent solution in its part of an industrial complex (phase 6). These structure with ogival arches in contrast with the rehabilitation as a Municipal and Judicial centre. installations were built by the new proprietors, the anarchic geometry of the Mudejar-style mullioned The greatest merits of the work performed by Miguel Alfonsos, descendants of the historic tenants, around windows of the Consell. del Rey and Íñigo Magro in their impeccable 1915 beside the old farmhouse for the production of The history of the building is printed on the facade of rehabilitation of Morella Town Hall can be listed as vegetable seed oil. the Lonja. Thus the Renaissance intervention follows: the recuperation of the building not only in its performed by Antonelli after the building had fallen material aspect but also from a functional point of into ruin at the end of the 16th century partly blinded view; the assumption of an impartial stance towards one of these arches. The design of the sloping street at history while ignoring historicist criteria; the updating Vicente García Ros y Alfonso Díaz Segura the end of the 19th century partly concealed another of the building without drawing a rigid and arbitrary Restoration Of Morella Town Hall arch. The intervention criteria adopted has respected line between the new and the restored; the conception (Castellón) these circumstances. of the building as a living testimony of its own history; The second main body of the building housed the and the emphasis laid on its intrinsic constructive and There are records of the presence of municipal Court offices and was in the shape of a tower. We do spatial values, while even resolving the conditions institutions in the historic town of Morella since the not know its original configuration exactly. Today it is imposed with extraordinary skill. times of the old 13th century Casa del Consell, no crowned with a single pitch roof joined to the general longer in existence, but the present town hall has roofing system and concealing the original shape of the undergone several restructuring processes since 1356, building. The recent intervention allowed us to leave when it moved to a new building. Recent rehabilitation each of these bodies visible, so that the tower is Michel Delgado Martínez works sponsored by the Generalitat of Valencia and emphasized as an emerging element and at the same Havana City Centre: Intervention, carried out by Miguel del Rey and Íñigo Magro have time respects the sloping plane of the existing roof. Recuperation & Transformation endowed it with new splendour. A cross-section of the building reveals the old prisons The current Casa del Consell or Casa de la Vila, as it is on the ground floor, and on the next floor the reception “But the historic should go before the architectonic. called, is a southern Gothic building with elements of rooms and the chapel. The upper floor is made up of a Why? Because making an architectonic analysis of a Mudejar origin. It was built in the mid 14th century large room where a central support holds the beams building without knowing its history would be like and, although the oldest part corresponds to the facade and the modillion system of the now missing coffered dissecting a corpse; and what matters in this case is of San Juan street, its interior presents interesting ceiling on which the upper rooms of the towers stood. not the dead body but what it was like and how it original elements in this public building, which was The general intervention criteria followed by Miguel worked when it was alive. Who ordered the buildings also used as a court of justice and a prison. del Rey and Íñigo Magro involved prioritizing the to be erected, what problems did they come up In the late 16th century, the building deteriorated function, acceding to it with the fewest possible means against, who made them, what setbacks arose, how do seriously and throughout the following century and acknowledging History not as a means of the buildings as they stand today relate to their different consolidation works were carried out, among archaeological behaviour but as the memory of the original condition or the way we remember them... which it is worth emphasizing the sloping buttress building. This attitude resulted in respect and These are the points that matter in our work. In a constructed by J.B. Antonelli in 1602, an impressive reappraisal towards the building at each and every one nutshell, we think buildings have lived a lifetime just element that reinforces the south wall and which has of the stages of the works. This neutral approach to like human beings and, like all human beings, they sometimes been considered as a small-scale replica of history constitutes a coherent response to the difficult have a personality that is the product of this life.” (J. the walls being built at that time in Peñíscola, not very chronology of interventions practised on the building. E. Weiss) far away from Morella. With an absolutely up-to-date stance, Magro and Del During the 18th and 19th centuries the state of the Rey proposed to exploit the poetic side of Architecture Notes on the historic evolution of the city of building worsened as a result of the partitioning of the expressed by means of a language all their own. They Havana rooms and the indiscriminate opening up of bays to decided to intervene rather than restore, thus The need to preserve Havana constructions, from a take full advantage of the interior space. These establishing, for example, an interesting dialogue whole building to a facade in ruins, as part of the city interventions brought about progressive loss of the late between the Gothic fabric, the Renaissance buttress inherited and its architectonic heritage involves medieval appearance of the building, which in the case and the new buttresses that they needed to design. In consolidation work that must be supported by the of southern Gothic is usually a large, diaphanous, this line it is worth mentioning that other dialogue citizens in general and all those who take an active compact, regular space, examples of which can be seen between the original materials and the current ones interest in consolidating a constructed memory. in the Lonjas (grain exchanges) of Palma de Mallorca –limestone for the ashlars or flagstones and timber– Havana has been losing this memory faster and faster, and Valencia. differently treated depending on whether it was Gothic in some cases due to the serious economic crisis the Several repairs have been carried out on the building or modern fabric, and even the interplay established country is going through and in others simply out of during the 20th century, some of which, such as those between the male tower of the Court of Justice and the neglect or indifference to this type of campaign. practised in the sixties, were rather controversial. The female one of the Consell. Havana is a unique and heterogeneous city that recent works performed by the Generalitat Valenciana Undoubtedly one of the main challenges of the project escaped the sixties building boom that paid no heed to in the nineties have restored to the building its original and the one which the architects have most heritage, during which whole architecturally function as Town Hall and Court and the monumental successfully solved was the section of the building’s impersonal districts were erected, destroying the splendour that adorned it in former times. interior courtyard. This courtyard had been invaded by identity of old traditional areas. In this it is different The building is made up mainly of two bodies with a some architectonic elements added a few decades ago from any other city in Latin America. The profound

125 LOGGIA Nº12 political and social changes that came about by Cuba monumental site; ninety per cent of its buildings autonomy where a large part of the product is used to after 1959, the year the revolution triumphed, kept it today have extraordinary merit from a historic, recuperate heritage buildings. from this development because there were more architectonic and environmental viewpoint. It is the The development of tourism, the entry of foreign urgent issues to be dealt with; paradoxically, this most important historic city centre in the country, and capital associated to national, the increase in business neglect saved it from a worse fate. What was considered one of the best conserved in Latin and banking and the rise of real estate companies, inevitable was the devastation caused by the passage America. among other elements, involve an acceleration of the of time; the progressive deterioration of the buildings process not entirely free from risks. There are dangers was obviously accentuated by their old age. Restoration and Recuperation of the Heritage of like the departure of local people and the residential The oldest part of Havana was founded in 1519 the Historic City Centre sector due to the increase of tertiarization, the beside Carenas Bay, on the site where the Plaza de Restoration works commenced in the Historic Centre negative effects of uncontrolled tourist development Armas stands today. The compact network of narrow of the City of Havana in 1981, after establishing the and the tertiary sector, and the huge increase in traffic streets developed into a city with five main squares: different criteria to be followed regarding with the ensuing problems. If we add to this the rapid Plaza de Armas, Plaza de San Francisco, Plaza Nueva requirements, methods and strategies. In 1982 United deterioration of the buildings due to their poor state of (no longer very new, despite its name), Plaza del Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural repair, the lack of urbanistic discipline, the plundering Cristo and Plaza de la Catedral. Organization (UNESCO) named the Historic Centre of abandoned buildings and the training requirements Since olden times the city has been protected by walls and the fortification system a World Heritage Site. in view of the new situation, we can have some idea and a system of strategic forts, among which we can From then until 1991 the organization of the works of the enormous challenge facing the city and its include four of the most important castles that was improved and the National Conservation, inhabitants. dominate the canal leading to the bay: Los Tres Reyes Restoration and Museology Centre (CENCREM) was de Morro, San Salvador de La Punta, La Real Fuerza created as a teaching centre and a methodological The Urban Planning Situation and San Carlos de la Cabaña. instrument. Many buildings were reconstructed, “Havana, like any other city, has had many planning From the 18th century onwards, the city within the refurbished or restored, and used to house museums, projects that have never got off the ground for one walls grew westwards, using similar urban and libraries and specialized institutions. reason or another. It was even on the verge of losing architectonic codes to old Havana, although with In April 1986 the Armed Forces decided to embark on its monumental Historic Centre at one stage. The wider thoroughfares and an orthogonal layout based the restoration of the forts of San Carlos de La proposal of the French urbanist Jean C. N. Forestier on early 19th century planning. Cabaña and Tres Reyes del Morro and, in the in 1929 was based on the building of a homogeneous Over the years the city spread beyond the walls, meantime, the City Government entered into maritime front, a city facade looking onto the sea whose redundancy was thus made evident. After their cooperation agreements with other cities and states, with ‘modern’ tendentiously European blocks taking demolition, started in 1863 and completed at the implemented by the Oficina del Historiador, for the the place of the heterogeneous traditional buildings. beginning of the century during the Republic, a restoration of other buildings threatening ruin. During The Ordinance Plan that the Town Planning system of parks and avenues was developed in the this process, specialized work forces were set up and Associates team was commissioned to draw up in area right between the city inside the walls and the a skilled team of architects, engineers, archaeologists, 1956, under the directorship of the Spaniard J. Luis one outside. Buildings were erected on larger plots, mural painting experts and art and social science Sert, suggested that the street network be replaced by which gave some streets a more homogeneous historians got to work in their different fields. The a structure of broad avenues and high-rise buildings, appearance; thus the Inglaterra, Plaza and Telégrafo most important achievement was the awakening of with the territory used for tourist facilities, saving just hotels were built, the tobacco factories, a magnificent social conscience regarding the restoration of the a few monuments that were representative of example of industrial architecture, were constructed, Historic Centre within the people’s reduced scale of economic, political or religious power.” along with the magnificent Asturian Centre and needs. After 1990, during the crisis caused by the The recuperation of the Historic Centre and the Galician Centre, a token of the economic prosperity disintegration of the Eastern European countries and understanding of its worth is mainly due to its of these two groups of emigrants. their influence on Cuban economy, along with the principal institution, the City Historian’s Office, Important buildings and green belts continued to exacerbation of the restrictive measures imposed by founded in 1938 by Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring. appear in this new area of Central Havana. There US foreign policy, the works were not only held up, This office was responsible for the initial ideas that followed the Presidential Palace, the Bacardí office but almost came to a standstill entirely. For that led to the protection of the heritage. In 1976, the block, an excellent example of Havana Art Deco, the reason, a special effort was made in these Heritage Department of the Ministry of Culture rationalist Fine Arts Palace, the neoclassical Capitolio recuperation works until 1994. started the investigations into Old Havana that led to Nacional, with its sweeping staircase, its enormous At the end of 1993, the Council of State of the the acknowledgement of its exceptional merits and a sculptures and its colossal dome, an important Republic of Cuba passed a new law that redefined the proposal for its refurbishment. In order to ensure the landmark in the city. functions of the City Historian’s Office, granting it preservation of the architectonic and urban heritage, The late 19th century saw the beginning of the the maximum authority to promote the preservation in 1979 it was included on the list of National decline of the residences in Old Havana. The Creole and restoration of the Monumental Heritage and Monuments and in 1981 the State granted the City bourgeoisie began to move out to the modern estates endowing it with legal personality and authorizing it Historian’s Office funds to invest in the restoration of to the west of the city, with their abundant parks and to request, obtain and administrate international aid, the Historic Centre and, at the same time, the tree-lined streets. The old palaces were turned into and at the same time conferring on it faculties to deal Monument Restoration Company and the Heritage tenements, and divided up into rented flats and rooms, with the urgent requirements of the inhabitants of the Architecture Workshop were set up. As we mentioned and so the citadel appeared, and soon became the area declared under its protection. above, in 1982 it was declared a World Heritage Site predominant form of dwelling in Old Havana. In 1995, after the 90-94 depression, almost as many by UNESCO. That same year the abovementioned No investments were made at the end of the 19th refurbishment works were commenced and/or National Conservation, Restoration and Museology century and the beginning of the 20th. Many negotiated as had been performed by the State in the Centre was created to lay down methodological buildings were irresponsibly knocked down and the previous fifteen years. guidelines for restoration in the country. In 1985 this fashion of modernizing and breaking away from the In order to adapt to the times, the view of the Historic institution, together with the Provincial Department of past came to the fore, giving rise to modern buildings Centre had to be broadened to consider it not only Physical Planning and Architecture, drew up the many of which blended into their surroundings and under its historic, cultural and social aspects, but also General Outlines for the Recovery of the Historic now contribute to the richness of this part of the city. as regards its economic dimension, as the intention Centre. Finally, in 1991, the Department of These are the typical financial and banking buildings was to achieve an integral self-financed development Architecture and Town Planning of the Corporation in the area which soon came to be known as the plan that would ensure the redemption and developed the first stage of the Municipal Havana Wall Street. profitability of the investment made. The Cuban Development Plan. In 1992 the Workshop School was The city continued to develop towards the west, and contribution in the negotiation with foreign capital set up to rescue almost forgotten trades related to the the old city was more and more neglected, falling into adds the benefits of future use to the tangible and field of restoration. In 1993 the company Habaguanex a slow history of decadence and deterioration. intangible values of the buildings. In no case are the was established to administrate the hotel, gastronomic The inherited buildings, even more ramshackle after buildings sold, but granted in usufruct for a period of and commercial system in order to help finance the being used as tenements, suffering vandalism, time, taking it into account also that the added value territory. In 1995 the Historic Centre was declared a inappropriate repairs, the inclemency of the weather of some buildings is so high as to constitute non- site of great tourist importance. and neglect, are now being salvaged. But it is a path negotiable heritage. This new situation provoked the In short, we might say that several plans of greater or of continual learning and great difficulties, which rapid development of basically official local economy lesser importance were working on the zone. It was cannot be carried out overnight. and mixed national and foreign associations, which essential to draw up a plan including an updating It is clear that Old Havana is an important made it possible to increase even more territorial process, not only in the sense of collecting data, but

126 ENGLISH VERSION also of including new criteria in view of the changes the dwelling and, as such, paid for by the owner of space of the central courtyard, with four porticoed that have come about in the way of considering town the dwelling, but as far as its use was concerned, it galleries on both floors and a very well-designed planning all over the world. was part of public events and inseparable from them. staircase, communicating with the courtyard by The birth of the Master Plan for the Integral These galleries and porticoes became spaces of means of the railing with turned balusters. Of special Revitalization of Old Havana gradual transition between the public sphere and the interest are the original carpentry of carved panels, In December 1994, the Master Plan for the Integral inside of the buildings or private sphere. the refurbished flooring of stone slabs on the ground Revitalization of Old Havana arose in view of the In the early years of US domination, the Cuban floor and hexagonal marble slabs in the main drawing new development prospects in the Historic Centre middle class, in a clear process of neo-colonial room on the upper floor, where there are also coffered and the necessity to create a single body to enclose all dependency, certainly did not hold national historic ceilings with Mudejar-style constructional the corporations connected with it. This plan was values in very high esteem and, with few exceptions, characteristics. drawn up at the request of the City Historian’s Office nobody took into account the importance the arbitrary Technical condition before the intervention. Before and the Spanish International Cooperation Agency to destruction of the built heritage could have for our the intervention the residence had reached a study the problems of the city centre and its culture. The Plaza Vieja was included in this process, regrettable state of structural repair, worsened by the fortifications on different levels and decide on the but it was impossible to destroy it completely, closing of the roofed courtyard with an anachronistic most appropriate strategies for its recuperation. although unscrupulous alterations jeopardized its structure of timber trusses and zinc plaques. Its For the first time, the Historic Centre had a Plan identity. restoration was determined by its great monumental drawn up by an interdisciplinary team including The most visible changes that can be seen today came merit. experts in the Environment, Town Planning, about between 1900 and 1915, and badly impair the Main work on the structure. A series of activities Architecture, Engineering, History, Sociology and harmony of the ensemble. The contrast provided by were performed in coordination with a view to Psychology, Economy and Finance, Law, Urban the height of the Palacio Cueto Hotel and the Gómez conserving the building and restoring its original Management and Information Science, among others, Mena office building altered the scale of the square. image. and with the participation of professionals from The Palacio Cueto was the only one to introduce Taboada also points out that the restoration works different institutions that have traditionally worked in period architectural merits. It was a well designed respected the transformations undergone by the house town planning, such as the City Historian’s Office, hotel in the style of Catalan art nouveau and did not throughout the 19th century, mainly the cast iron the National Conservation, Restoration and project its great height directly on to the square, but railings on the balconies and the closing of the arches Museology Centre and national, provincial and was discreetly set at a diagonal to it. of the loggia on the upper floor. He explains that this municipal offices of Physical Planning; all university The House of the Condes de Jaruco started a closing led to the best known and admired motif in faculties and research centres related with the field of recuperation process of the Plaza Vieja as a whole. the building, the three coloured glass louvers heritage recovery were also to be involved. Thanks to these rescue works, the square has re- surrounded by wood, the central one with an The Parque Central de La Habana, the Plaza Vieja emerged little by little as one of the sites of the elaborate floral design flanked by the other two with and the area surrounding them are important nuclei in greatest architectural, artistic and historic value in a geometric pattern and the arches at the end are the traditional old centre of the city. Many of the Havana. walled up with brick partitions and blinds without buildings there today are in a very bad state of repair, louvers. which has a very negative effect on the general image The House of the Condes de San Juan de Jaruco Research into the decorative painting of the house led of these two squares. The architectural richness of the in Plaza Vieja to the discovery of a valuable collection of friezes buildings and the presence of some of the country’s Built between 1733 and 1737, it is a typical example and the layout of the stones, engraved and painted most important cultural institutions call for an urgent of a house with a mezzanine, quite representative of black in the arches, columns and partial areas of the work plan to guarantee the revitalization of these the Historic Centre and corresponding to large walls. sites. colonial-style mansions linked to the advent of a social class enriched by the boom of the sugar Parque Central Hotel, its Impact on the Urban Plaza Vieja, an Urban Ensemble with a Unique industry in the 18th century. This luxurious house has Environment of Havana Parque Central Identity a mezzanine and thus perfects the segregation of The area around the Parque Central has great general The Plaza Vieja stands out as one of the most functions that came about as a result of the family’s merit, as it includes architectural values first important examples of colonial architecture in new aristocratic habits. Store rooms, service area, expressed in the old Capitolio Nacional, where the Havana. It is a site with an enormous monumental coach houses and stables were all on the ground floor. Ministry of Science, Technology and the value that has acquired such urban and architectural The mezzanine housed the servants’ quarters and Environment is currently located, the largest building importance over the years that it can be considered to some local people to carry out administrative tasks. in the area, and the baroque facade of the old represent a typical state of the city. Finally the family enjoyed what was known as the Galician Centre and, to a lesser degree, the Its location, originally in 1559, precociously marked ‘noble floor’, with comfortable, spacious rooms Renaissance style of the old Asturian Centre. the role urban development was to play in Havana, sheltered from the noise of the street and the menial In the area there are also some elements of with its port among the busiest in America, and the tasks on the floors below. remarkable historic value, such as the Acera del city itself likely to multiply the number of inhabitants Structural and architectural elements. The courtyard is Louvre on the ground floor of the Hotel Inglaterra, in a short time and to have a large floating a large enclosure surrounded by arcades, with three where important political events have taken place. population. arches on each side, forming broad galleries like the Besides, the headquarters of the old Capitolio High-class families built houses in the vicinity of the best houses of the time. The reception rooms at the symbolizes the historic period of the pseudo- square. Rich settlers were attracted by the closeness front are covered by excellent discreetly decorated Republic. The buildings around the park are a token of the sea and the docks. carved ceilings. Some timber railings and doors were of the past power of the Spanish bourgeoisie during As it occupied such a privileged position in the urban conserved for a long time. the Republic, and the Paseo del Prado and the Parque structure, it acquired unquestionable importance for The portal is one of a few crowned with broken or Central have historic importance as part of the urban almost two centuries. Not in vain was it considered interrupted pediments instead of plain entablatures. development of the city. the principal square in the city, with an eminently The alteration of the old balcony on the facade is The atmosphere of the surroundings is closely linked civil and public category. It was characterized by the evident, as it should have been made of timber like in to the Prado and Parque Central area and the gardens private use of its ground with residences and the the other houses in the square, since the framework of of the Capitolio, as well as the Parque de la public use of the square, particularly for holding that floor is still timber. In spite of this, the Fraternidad, a little bit further away. markets and festivities. composition is pleasant with the contrast between the Café Central & Café Alemán Building. This two- Besides, the Plaza took on a characteristic and well props and the shapes of the arches on both stories. storey building with well proportioned neoclassical defined architectural structure thanks to the The beautiful stained glass louvers in the upper arcades was still standing until the late eighties. There combination of these two uses of its space, public and arches, probably from the 19th century, are were two very famous cafés inside: Café Central and private. A remarkable equilibrium was achieved outstanding. Café Alemán, and the first floor housed for many between them and, at the same time, a close The author of the restoration, the architect Daniel years the most elegant or aristocratic gentlemen’s interrelationship. Taboada, has stated that this house is a major club of those years, the Unión Club, which later One of the most outstanding elements in this spatial example of the upper middle-class domestic erected its own building on the Malecón and later relationship was the appearance of the porticoes with architecture of the time, with a large fortified disappeared in the midst of the changes that were the corresponding loggias or galleries with covered doorway, a loggia on the upper floor, a portal with taking place in Cuban society. The area occupied by balconies on top. Whether added on to existing pilasters and a broken pediment framing the coat of this building now forms part of the Hotel Parque houses or built next to them, the portico was part of arms, the carriage entrance leading into the open Central. The part of the facade that was rescued and

127 LOGGIA Nº12 incorporated into the hotel belonged to this old the Hotel Parque Central four types of intervention: permanent conservation building. The inclusion of this new building in the historic programmes, integral restoration, partial restructuring Hotel Plaza. Still standing, although with alterations. centre met with the logical rejection and indifferent and new construction. It was originally built with two storeys, and in the assimilation by the City and its inhabitants. Partial restructuring. The new part of the building, early 20th century it was occupied by the Spanish The task presented was complex, but very clear for opting for a context architecture, would take the newspaper Diario de la Marina until this paper had its the team designing the project: to rescue the codes of traditional Cuban architecture and reinterpret own installations built on the corner of Paseo del fragments of the old facade and incorporate them into them, using modern, mostly high-tech materials in Prado and Teniente Rey, and the Marqués de Pinar the new building in such a way as to achieve a forms of the past, each based on a form already in del Río purchased the original building, to which he symbiosis between the new and the old with each part existence in the surrounding area thanks to what we added on two more floors in the same style as the conserving its own expression and harmonizing with call Collective Memory. original building and made it into the Hotel Plaza, the other. The treatment of the existing fragments of facade was still in existence today. Some formal characteristics of the works. based on salvaging them with the same materials as Hotel Inglaterra. Another neoclassical construction, - Monumentalization of scale (impressive buildings). were used in the original building technique, and originally two storeys, then three and now four, the - Facade measuring over 12 metres. glass was used as a neutral element in the refurbished Hotel Inglaterra stands on the opposite side of the - Portico as a compulsory condition. facade to close the bays. Parque Central, on the corner of Paseo de Martí and - Great concentration of hotels and cultural services. At no time was there any attempt to meld the two San Rafael street; in colonial times, the ground floor - Interior courtyards with galleries, monumental languages, but the source or origin of each part was housed a café called El Louvre, a name that has not staircases in new classic, Gothic or eclectic styles. clearly emphasized without trying to conceal the truth been lost since the entrance into the hotel is still - Wrought and cast iron fittings for window and from the observer. known as the Acera del Louvre, a very emblematic balcony railings and staircases. New construction. The restoration and incorporation place in the city and the site of some major episodes - The use of the balcony as a link between public and of existing fragments of the old building in the new in Cuban history. private life. hotel has the charm of making the tourist feel the Spanish Centres (Galician Centre & Asturian Centre). - Total opening of windows with blinds and double atmosphere of the time it was built and has the The Spaniard who emigrated to Cuba during the french windows of colossal dimensions with advantage of rescuing heritage values and at the same colonial period and until well into the Republic, geometric designs. time brightening up an important area of the Historic finding themselves without their families, friends and - In the exteriors there are a great many laurel bushes, Centre, which also enhances the cultural promotion of sometimes not very well off, felt the need to meet for artistic lamps, stone and marble benches, lions, the area. mutual protection, which gave rise to the so-called bronze corbels and beautiful terrazzo paving. The ground plan of the building strives to rehabilitate regional centres, the most important of which were - The average height of the surrounding buildings is the urban design: a compact block typical of the city, the Galician Centre, the Asturian Centre, the Castilian 26 metres. with a central courtyard and wings parallel to the Centre and the Catalan Centre. - Facades in a continuous line and homogeneous streets in a theme to be found repeatedly in Cuban Two of these palaces were opposite the Parque height and balconies with terraced-style houses, like a architecture. Central. The Galician Centre is a four-storey closed space interrupted only by the roads. As regards facades, the exterior design of the hotel structure, inside which the old National Theatre used has been subjected to its location concerning height, to be, now known as the Sala García Lorca del Gran General description of the project and its facade line and extension, shores, width of the Teatro de La Habana, whose facade is adorned with integration in the old urban structure arcades and the existence of the latter as a several marble sculptures; the author of these was the At the request of the company Empresa Mixta compulsory condition, the use of balconies, among Belgian Jean Beleau, the co-author of the Presidential Amanecer Holding S.A., the project consisted of a other things, so that it shows its modernity or Palace; experts attribute many different influences to document with the technical data and definitions of contemporaneity without formally attacking the this building: Spanish Renaissance, French the major operations, with a conceptual analysis of surrounding atmosphere. Renaissance and even baroque. The Asturian Centre such an important site and the following design is also four storeys high, and it was designed by the requirements: Conclusions Spanish architect Manuel del Busto. It is Herrero- 1. To rescue what was left of the original facade for Any development project must include among its style Spanish Renaissance. the new building that was going to be erected, thus strategies the recuperation and enhancement of the The Park itself. Situated exactly on the border conserving the scale of pedestrian circulation in the heritage of the territory involved. In this way, cultural between old and modern Havana, that is to say, shadow of its pilasters; besides, to create a space with heritage becomes a key factor in the promotion of the immediately after the enclosure behind the old a use defined as an extension of the internal functions socioeconomic situation. ramparts, the Parque Central was just the start of the towards the outside. The heritage of this historic city, like any other asset, famous Paseo de Extramuros or Alameda de Isabel II 2. To use the porticoed arcade towards the rest of the has fluctuated over the years. However, in spite of the to begin with, but little by little it began to acquire a streets to permit pedestrians to circulate under a considerable loss of heritage in times long past and personality of its own. For many years it separated height of about 7 metres and a minimum width of 3 even not so long past, the legacy that remains today is the two parts of Paseo del Prado, now known as metres. still remarkable. Paseo de Martí, when it spread towards the sea like 3. The courtyard, as an element of spatial In general, the deterioration of most of the buildings the present Plaza de la Fraternidad; this second part organization, would contribute with its green belt to in the historic centre of Havana is fundamentally disappeared when the Capitolio Nacional was built. the view and its interior and exterior integration, associated with: the age of the buildings, different The Parque Central, at the centre of which stood a permitting harmony of ambiences, protection from uses throughout their useful lifetime (unsuitable statue of a little loved queen, Isabel II, until the end the sun and natural ventilation and illumination. exploitation), incorrect repairs, the demolition of of Spanish domination, little by little became the 4. To use mouldings, friezes and cornices and neighbouring houses and lack of maintenance. most popular place in Havana in the final decades of fenestration with french windows to sift the light and The city and urban spaces are, above all else, places the colonial period and the first half century of the guarantee ventilation. for human beings and society to live in. We cannot Republic. The first statue erected in Cuba as a 5. The use of balconies of minimum dimensions with plan history or produce it, but what we do today will homage to the hero José Martí was placed at the wrought iron railings. be history tomorrow and will determine the future in centre of this park and still stands there today as the The premises in the formal-expressive aspect were one way or another. first and most spontaneous popular tribute to his rather more difficult to determine, especially in a The aim of conservation is to maintain the cultural beloved memory. Because of its location, then indeed zone of such great historic and architectural value. value of a place, and must include steps for its safety, very central, because of its character as a favourite Several facade designs were presented to the investor maintenance and its future. All the disciplines that meeting place for the Havana dwellers, and because and it was agreed that the most suitable for the image can contribute to the study and safeguarding of a of the important character who presided it, until 1959 desired should be a facade reinterpreting the codes of place must come into play. it was the site of countless official ceremonies, the area, although this alternative might involve A suitable conservation policy for a place will be political assemblies and also the most heated popular losing the contemporaneity of a work with an identity determined above all through an understanding of its protests, especially during the uprising against the of its own, the product of a new generation while cultural value and the maintenance of the whole tyranny of Machado and Batista. The development of taking into account the merits and achievements of visual environment. It is based on respect for the city today is leaving the Parque Central behind, as past generations. documentary, physical or any other sort of evidence occurred before with the Plaza de Armas. Intervention on the block and building project. The and the contributions of each period to the site. possible solutions for the refurbishment and When planning an intervention, it is always worth Second half of the nineties, project for a new hotel: preservation of any old zone can be summarized in considering the idea of setting up a workshop to deal

128 ENGLISH VERSION with the problems of the building to be refurbished starting with its historic value and concluding with the technical state it is in, in order to come up with the best architectural and structural solution by means of a multidisciplinary team of workers.

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