07:00 • 27 Dec 2020
Alberto Campo Baeza is the new National Architecture Prize.
This week, the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda has announced the concession of this award, endowed with 60,000 euros, to Alberto Campo Baeza.
Among the entities that endorsed his candidacy is the Official College of Architects of Almería.
Campo Baeza has as imprint of his works in Almería enclaves such as the new Plaza de la Catedral, the headquarters of the Provincial Delegation of Health on the Ronda Highway and the Labor University, which he designed back in 1976, almost half a century ago.
On his website, Alberto Campo Baeza, born in Valladolid and Emeritus Professor of Projects at the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid, details how he devised his projects in Almería.
Labor University
With photographs of the time captured by Carlos Pérez Siquier, Campo Baeza refers to one of his first projects, the Universidad Laboral de Almería.
“The situation, in an esplanade by the sea but without views over it, he suggested, with the Almería climate, a ‘kashba’ solution ordered by a rational scheme. To organize a complex teaching program, a system of streets leading to a central square is established. This network of corridors is connecting classrooms, laboratories and offices with various patios, through which they are illuminated and ventilated, creating a highly efficient and typologically verified alveolated organism in that climate (the Chanca neighborhood of Almería). In some spaces the points of light are accentuated with deep skylights that, appearing on the roof, offer a unique image ”.
And he adds, about this building on the outskirts of the capital, that it is “it was always thought that the patios, with the climate thus controlled, would become fertile gardens of native species. The vindonias, bougainvillea, jasmine and vines had to grow there, making possible the interior-exterior continuity in the life of the building ”.
Cathedral Square
It’s been years since Alberto Campo Baeza won the national competition for the new Plaza de la Catedral de Almería. More than two decades after winning that competition, the architect saw his sketches become a visible reality in the capital.
The jury valued “in a very prominent way the global vision of the problem and its solution with the maximum economy of means”.
“The contest required the reorganization of the Plaza de la Catedral de Almería. And the project proposed a simple architecture “without architecture”. The floor was paved with Macael marble, as in the pedestrian areas of the rest of the city. Twenty-four palm trees, taller than the Cathedral itself, as if they were the columns of a nave whose vault was the sky itself, order a space dominated by the Renaissance façade by Juan de Orea, as if it were an altarpiece. The intention is to take “more with less” to its most radical extreme, ”explains the architect on his official website.
Health Delegation
More recent in time is the headquarters of the current Health Delegation. “On an elongated plot of 40 × 8.5 meters, which allows a maximum height of 7 floors, it is built up as a complete volume. It was decided to build a straight rectangular parallelepiped all of it in stone. The thick walls house storage cabinets. The windows are double. Inside, glazed. Outside, as the most singular point, They make stone shutters and the amount of light that enters the rooms is regulated. When all the shutters are closed, the parallelepiped appears as a solid stone box ”, describes Alberto Campo Baeza.
One of Alberto Campo Baeza’s latest projects is a house in Mojácar. “Building in Mojácar is like building in the Forbidden City. As he did in his day, brilliantly, Roberto Puig ”, is described on the website of the architect who was awarded the National Prize this week.
“It is a steep site, like all of them, between two stepped buildings, like all of them. And punctually complying with the existing regulations. We would like, once again, to build here the most beautiful architecture possible ”, adds the architect about that“ cascade of volumes ”.
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