Innovación en el diseño de centrales hidroeléctricas a principios de siglo XX. La ingeniería arquitectura de Casto Fernández-Shaw en la presa de La Jándula

Abstract

The power plant location in the first hydroelectrial dams was a relevant issue at the end of XIX century and early XX. Different solutions were tried, some of them with very interesting aesthetics results and hydraulic and structural implications. Such is the case of La Jándula dam, inaugurated in 1930, that includes the power station inside the dam. This article examines the possible national and international inspirations of this singular solution, corroborating the hypothesis of its unprecedented nature. The collaboration of the architect Casto Fernández-Shaw in the design and integration of the engine room was decisive, because it achieved a result of an aesthetic quality and formal expressiveness unprecedented in a work of hydraulic engineering, as well as the birth of a style Shaw himself defined as architectural engineering.