Madrid versus Barcelona: Two Visions for the Modern City and Block (1929-36)

This essay proposes a comparative analysis between two parallel moments in the advancement of modern urbanism and urban housing in Spain before the Civil War: the most discussed in the historiography, the Plan Macià for Barcelona by José Luis Sert and the GATCPAC, in collaboration of Le Corbusier (1931-1938) (Figure 1); the Anteproyecto del trazado viario y urbanización de Madrid by architect Secundino Zuazo Ugalde, with the initial collaboration of German planner Hermann Jansen (1929; 1930-1936). Unique in this situation is the fact that those Spanish architects built, at the same time than the master plan for their respective city, an experimental housing block? the Casa Bloc (1933-1936) in Barcelona and the Casa de Las Flores in Madrid (1929-32)?whose urban and architectural characteristics concretized their conception of the modern city. The paper argues that, even though their respective visions of the city and blocks strongly differed in urban form and architectural language, they both embodied a particular Southern approach to the modern city and urban life, which contrasted with contemporary examples in Northern Europe. The master plans were not implemented, but the buildings, damaged or mutilated after 1936, have been renovated or reconstructed. They remain as two exceptional references in the short history of modernism in preCivil War Spain, as well as continuous sources of inspiration for contemporary housing in Spain.