El bloque las flores, de Secundino Zuazo

Abstract

Secundino Zuazo provided Fullaondo at the time with an extensive list of works, informing about his professional life, in view of the publication of the number that the Madrid journal Arquitectura brought out on his work. The surprising thing was the important number of social housing projects that appear on this list and, furthermore, that this aspect of Zuazo's work had never been studied. In different works, I have pointed out that at the end of the twenties and beginning of the thirties, Zuazo's professional studio went into a convulsion with the incorporation of Garcia Mercadal, or the tandem of Arniches and Dominguez, as well as an important group of German architects, including Michael Fleischer who would shortly become the Studio Manager. Zuazo's projects adapted to a new type of client, which was no longer the white collared worker who, until then had occupied the rented housing developed by the Compañía Urbanizadora Metropolitana, but a new middle class who no longer wanted to live on the edge of the Ensanche but rather, in privileged areas within it; this required a different type of housing programme. Consequently, the unique aspect is not the adoption of a new architectonic language, but the definition of an urban action where the different types of housing mix together in a new way, forming the blocks. Concerned from the start about publicising "Las Flores" block project, there were many "scripts" or "indices" of publications that never saw the light. Aware of how much that project connected to the proposals formulated in Germany on how to redefine the closed block, the surprising thing, however, in those notes, is that back in 1928, Zuazo already proposed that project as an example of both "European modern architecture" and based on the reference of El Escorial. The observations made of the "Las Flores" block project, which appear here, were personal notes written not so much to be published, but rather with the aim of defining and clarifying ideas. Likewise, the sketches of that project that are presented now are more an exercise of reflection -as shown by the spontaneity of the lines and the fact that they are sketches- And not notes to be published. But, and above all, they help us understand that Zuazo's work was not so much linear, but that it was characterised by looking for and trying out solutions.