‘Witness to an era’ looks at the work of the architect who drew the current appearance of alicante
The way of being Curb, always critical, he has been away from the big spotlights
Review the life of Juan Antonio García Solera, is to relive the last century in Alicante. The journalist Martín Sanz retrieves it in the book Witness to an era, that has presented this Monday in the Adda. “The current appearance of alicante, cannot be understood without him, another thing is that whether you like it or not”, explains the author.
To his 94-year-old Garcia Solera has all the prestige and recognition that can be hoped for. Sanz reviews buildings own as the police school in Ávila or the Auditorium of the Provincial council of Alicante. But others were a reflection of the stage of the 60s and 70s that was known as developmentalism. And it was not until a long time after they valued the beauty of their proposals.
Sanz refers to the saying of a book comes another book to explain how to get to Garcia Solera. With his work on the constructor, Manuel Peláez, to whom this worked, and, in particular, The great forgotten. Postcards from The Albufereta engaged with the architect. In this area of the coast of Alicante, built the residential Towers, an example of what was later photographers such as David Sardaña called rationalism to the east. A period that Sanz already appreciated for his works in Alicante and Benidorm.
“There is a time period in which everything that is done, whether in film, novels, or books is bad-criticizes Sanz-; well, no, gentlemen”. The reporter asks “one more look clean and naive” to review certain works and with the to overcome “the a lot of prejudice”. He himself has applied after her long conversations with Solera to “look through the eyes of others the remodeling of the Blades, the Adda, and the complex Vistahermosa”. The latter, a residential housing sponsored by a Box, with its own church, a restaurant and shops re-visit to discover the proposal so different with the one that was presented in 1962.
The works of Solera are distributed by Alicante. And it serves him to Sanz to review works such as the nursing home calle capitán Segarra, in the avenue of Dénia, the Palace of Congresses, or the building of houses of the plaza de los Luceros. A tour makes in your questions and also in the many photographs that accompany it.
to Break the stereotype
The interest that was Sanz in preparing this book was to break “the stereotype that we have the profane image of the architect, of someone very idolized, almost deified”. Solera has not been as well. “You will not be fit never in the role of the star architect. Without being in the antipodes of the term, anda fairly distant”.
What it does have is character. And a lot of. An attitude that values Sanz: “it has Always been coherent and worth listening to because he has always defended his arguments. With a tenacity and a strength of supreme will”. In fact, remember that one of the things that we recognized is that “if I would have learned to pull the jacket from the political turn, I would have gone the other way. Your way of being you have been away from the big centres”.
Another of those signs of consistency that points Sanz “is that it keeps a critical spirit when he says what idea you have of Alicante and what you don’t like your city”. Or what certain projects do not come to be as he wanted.” One of them is the own Auditorium of Alicante. He said a couple of years ago that there were several things that did not recognize as his own, from the walk, the lack of a rear garden or the bar. Even he said “it filled up quickly and running to be able to open, and that within a few years will start to move, with the rain and when it starts to settle”.
Sanz, as an interviewer, he emphasized that Solera talks “without any modesty, and a thing that says, thing that reasons”. When it relates to this project or the Palace of Congresses, recalls that “it is not always the architect has the last word.”
And that Solera had a lot of power. He was municipal architect of the town Hall of Benidorm between 1969 and 1975, and the county Council between 1959 and 1983. In addition, he participated in the general plans of municipalities such as Mutxamel, Sant Vicent or El Campello. What he recognizes in his talk with Sanz that is in the (negative it is the plan of urban development of Alicante, “made me feel a failure.”
If that made him feel so, in the end are the various awards received until you get to the College of the Valencia Community acknowledged as the Master of Architects. All a legacy of work that will continue to live despite the fact that “he recognizes that, with the perspective of the 94-year-old has focused excessively on the professional and has left his family, which perhaps had to be more time because it has not been known weekend and vacation”.
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