by Fabrizio Zanni

José Antonio Coderch. La cellula e la luce, Luigi Spinelli, testo&immagine, Roma, 2003 (pp. 93, Euro 12,39)

‘Architecture comes from the making of a room’. This famous remark by Louis Kahn perfectly reflects José Antonio Coderch’s design methods, though apparently nothing else connects their buildings. Coderch’s creations are not engendered by a theory, but rather by internal order. His most celebrated aphorism is ‘It’s not geniuses that we need now’, the title of an article published in Domus in November 1961.

He did not write much: no treatises or theoretical essays. And many of his writings demonstrate an anti-academic position supporting a professional practical rigour based on a proper relationship with the client and a kind of moral building founded on the honesty of materials, textures and the physical aspects of architecture, more than (or even adverse to) the theoretical, spatial component. This stance is a far cry from that of Italian academic culture, but close to some figures, such as Ponti and Gardella.

This was due to the Catalan context and Coderch’s personal attitude; the famed rigour was probably passed on by Jordi Jujol, Gaudí’s pupil. The approach is detached, based on just a few elements, such as drawing up a detailed programme derived from client contact. There are many in the Arxiu Coderch. He died on November 6, 1985. Generally, his works can be divided into three successive phases. The first featured social commitment in the battle against the reactionary architecture that was the sad outcome of the protrated Spanish Civil War. He defined more civilized housing standards for Obra Sindical del Hogar (OSH) and became interested in Mediterranean architecture.

At the time, Gio Ponti made a big impact by publishing Spanish architecture in Domus, and Coderch built his famous, and much criticized, Spanish Pavilion at the 1951 Triennale. The quest for simple architecture based on white walls, measured openings and respect for the age-old local building tradition led Coderch to erect his leading creations of the time: the OSH apartments of 1944 in Sitges, a real siedlung, interpreting traditional materials and building methods and incorporating the Mediterranean style.

The 1945 OSH complex in Moncada I Reixac reinterpreted the traditional Catalan rural house, the masia. It is replicated in two groups of four houses. These constructions demonstrate the will to provide the dwelling with average well being: neither existenz-minimum nor wasted space. Besides the friendship with Ponti and the presumed imitation of his houses on America’s Pacific Coast, there was a profound support and redesign of Spain’s constructional roots. But the plan of Sitges and the viviendas protegidas in Roses are rational and fit perfectly into modern European architecture.

In the famous Les Forques complex in Sitges, the relationship between the facades’ traditional materials and techniques and the layout by rooms led to fully rational plans. The T-shaped plan of ‘Mediterranean’ building type D at Les Forques (1945) did not differ much from that of the renowned Catasùs House (1956), whose exterior is nearly Miesian. At the end of this period comes the Ugalde House (1951). The author’s sketch of the internal patio, with the external stairs leading to the upper floor, resembles the solution adopted by Ponti for the Marchesano House (1939). However, the execution differs.

The second period represents the peak of his career: the built and projected works between the Catusùs House and the urban buildings of the 1960s (such as the famed Casa de Pisos in Barceloneta) meant the completion of a design method based on how the room, wall and windows relate. During this stage, the experimentation of residential design became manifest. The aggregation mechanism linked rooms via connecting spaces to the central core of the kitchen and service areas. From here, in the directions determined by the context, the living and dining rooms and their exterior extensions are born almost by germination.

At times, guest or servant rooms are added to these three sectors. Inside this whole made of parts (we are reminded of Kahn’s ‘society of rooms’), the sleeping area consisted in nearly convent-like cells, recalling similar experiments by Le Corbusier. Like the charterhouses, each has a view and access to its own outdoor space. The latter always has a swimming pool in the houses located out of town, such as the Uriach House of 1961, which became a model for the other works. It consists in a kind of replica or extension of the home’s interior, almost a double image, having the same floor and different level.

The relationship between inside and out was, in fact, one of the key elements in the Catalan master’s method. That he was not loath to employ the context positively in his designs is shown, for instance, by sketches for the Ugalde House, which meticulously trace the distances and positions of the few existing trees, as well as notes manifesting the desire to fit into the very beautiful, intense surroundings. The same is found in sketches for the Puertas House (later he opted for a more conventional layout) with overlapping traces regulateurs. The aggregation method’s most brilliant examples were the Uriach and Rozes Houses. It was copied more and more obsessively until the Banco Urquijo complex in Barcelona (1967) and the competition entry for the Actur Lacua rifle range in Vitoria (1976).

It cannot go beyond the single or added building scale to become an urban model. Coderech was influenced by many movements, including Ponti’s Mediterranean school, Neutra’s American school and even, in some ways, that of Mies. Yet it seems that organic architecture was not particularly important, despite contacts with Zevi and a few isolated references to the Usonian Houses. So it would be going too far to speak of ‘cellular organism’. The Uriach House is an episode of apparently organic architecture within a rationalist, almost functionalist, method; however, the Ronchamps Chapel does not cancel out Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation.

Coderch’s cell is a minimal unit of ‘appropriate size’. On the other hand, the Masoliver House in Majorca (1951), one of the least published, has two types of plan: the ‘organic’ study, with curved walls and amoeba-like ‘cellular’ rooms, while the definitive ink drawing is purely orthogonal. In both cases, as in all of his production, the wall is fundamental, no matter what shape it takes. The screen is, at times, solid, thick and impenetrable, becoming structural. Elsewhere it is just a diaphragm letting through sun and artificial light. Many photographs by the architect show the attention he paid to the diaphragm-like walls, which at dusk or night reveal the inside through the glass or grilles. The demonstration of this variation on a theme comes from the Instituto Social de la Marina on Passeig Joan de Barbò in Barceloneta, where the wall acts a structure and envelope, with the windows screened by the famed sliding grilles.

Walls, light and diaphragms are basic elements in Coderch’s production, as is carefully pointed out by Luigi Spinelli. The third and final period of his career has been neglected by the critics, though his buildings have been extensively covered. During this time his health and output slowly declined, from the Trade Towers in Barcelona of 1969 to the 1972 Banco Urquijo buildings of 1972. In spite of everything, the same method was used.

This is shown by the perimeter walls of the Institut Francés (Barcelona, 1975), pierced by serial windows, and the smooth, changing curtain walls in the Trade complex, which still manifest an attempt to define a diaphragm-like relationship between the outside and inside of the structure. The same is true of the Barcelona School of Architecture extension of 1978, where the exterior space is wonderfully insinuated into the interior, and the plan resembles the Madrid Girasol Building of 1966.

Luigi Spinelli’s volume efficaciously collects and interprets the master’s main works with plenty of quotations and references. Given its format, it is a nimble guide to the oeuvre and basic biography of the Catalan architect. His sketches, writings and original drawings come from the Arxiu Coderch, part of the Escola Tècnica Superior de Arquitectura del Vallès, Sant Cugat del Vallès, near Barcelona.

Fabrizio Zanni is a professor of architectural design at the Milan Polytechnic