If any reason is good to evoke the figure of the architect Josep Lluís Sert –born in Barcelona in 1902 and died in that city in 1983, forty years ago now (next Thursday)–, two other reasons now coincide with this anniversary the evocation: the year dedicated, in this 2023, to the painter Pablo Picasso whose name was linked to that of Sert when his Guernica was presented in the Republic pavilion designed by the architect; and, also, the 50th anniversary celebrations of another key work by Sert, the Fundació Miró, which will begin to be held at the end of next year.
Sert is probably the Catalan architect with the greatest international projection. It is true that Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) enjoys worldwide fame, although his work is concentrated in Catalonia; It is also true that Ricardo Bofill (1939-2022) designed works for many countries and built skyscrapers in Chicago, the city where they were born, although his best works are from his youth; and it is also true that Enric Miralles (1955-2000) possessed a singular genius, of incalculable potential, although he died very young, at the age of 45, without time to see the completion of some of his major works, such as the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. .
The case of Sert is very different from that of the other three great Catalan architects mentioned in the previous paragraph. As soon as he finished his studies in 1929, he went to Paris to work with Le Corbusier, whom he had invited, while still a student, to give a conference in Barcelona. Later he set up his own office in Barcelona, ??and left key works of local modern architecture in our city, such as Casa Bloc, Dr. Saye’s tuberculosis dispensary or the apartment building on Muntaner street. And no less important was his work in drawing up the Macià plan, a comprehensive project for the transformation of Barcelona in which the GATCPAC, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret also participated.
A man of the left, in 1937 he signed with Luis Lacasa the aforementioned pavilion of the Spanish Republic at the Paris Exposition. At the end of the Civil War, Sert left a France that would soon fall to Hitler’s Germany and headed for American exile, during which time he developed the bulk of his successful professional career.
Several facets coincide in the figure of Sert. In the first place, that of a great architect, accredited in his country and later revalidated in the United States, a country whose nationality he acquired in 1951, and in many others, from France, where he built the spectacular Fondation Maeght (1958-1971), in Saint Paul. from Vence to Iraq, in whose capital, Baghdad, he built the US embassy (1955-1963). Also the facet of a great urban planner, reflected in his famous essay Can our cities survive? and applied in his designs to renovate, among others, Latin American cities such as Bogotá, Havana, Medellín, Chimbote or Cidade dos Motores, developed in his New York stage, which spanned from his arrival in the US until the mid-1950s. The facet of a great academic figure also coincides, after becoming in 1953, at the suggestion of his predecessor Walter Gropius, the dean of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, a position he held for fifteen years.
This combination of architectural, urban planning and academic talents is what makes Sert a figure of enormous projection, certainly on the Catalan scene, but also globally. Other facets of his activity could still be added to what has been said, such as the professional one, with his dedication, from his early youth, to the CIAM congresses, which he presided over for a few years. And that allowed him to maintain intellectual relations and camaraderie with the great architects of his time, such as the aforementioned Le Corbusier and Gropius. And also with artists of the stature of Joan Miró, who was joined by a great friendship.
Sert’s architecture is a reflection of his social concerns, of the revolution in modern architecture led in Europe by professionals such as Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe, of his own research interest and, of course, of the Mediterranean construction tradition, which in his long American exile he idealized and distilled in the different settings in which he built. “There is in my architecture –Sert said during one of the multiple tributes received– something fundamental: a Mediterranean element that is like a nostalgia for the climate, for the light, for everything that my eyes saw in the course of my youth in the country where I was born”.
That indelible heritage, combined with his interest in the culture of the countries in which he built, as well as in the best expressions of his contemporary artistic vitality, guided him in his constructive work, wherever he went. And it translates into his taste for patios, terraces, skylights and other elements that contribute to his architecture interacting with the natural conditions of the place. All of this is very evident, for example, in his works in Ibiza, such as the houses in Punta Martinet (1964-1969), where the connection with vernacular architecture occurs almost naturally. But also in the works of his last and very prolific stage in Cambridge (Massachusetts), from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, which includes major works such as Holyoke Center (1958-1966), or Peabody Terrace (1961- 1964), with its famous houses for married students, true classics of 20th-century American architecture, as well as others on a domestic scale. For example, his own houses in Locust Valley (Long Island) or the one that was built later in Cambridge.
Or, in particular, in some of his late works projected on his intermittent return to Spain, first as an American citizen, then, without hindrance, from 1975, when the sanctions imposed by Francoism were lifted and which for many years years prevented him from building in his native country. Among them, the Fundació Miró in Barcelona stands out, designed in 1968 and inaugurated in 1975, precisely four months before Franco’s death. Or the residential complex of Les Escales Park, in Barcelona, ??a bittersweet development for its author. And also the Porta Catalana, a motorway service area at the height of La Jonquera, which does not add major novelties to its catalogue, but has the symbolic value of the door always being open and the return to his country, from which he had to leave nearly forty years earlier.
