La documentación gráfica de los proyectos de los institutos laborales de Rafael Aburto Renobales en Elche y Orihuela

Abstract

At the beginning of the decade of the fifties, after signing the friendship treaty between Spain and the United States, there is international recognition of the Franco regime, a moment that marks the end of the period of autarky and the beginning of a market economy lead to the developmental period of the sixties. One of the first consequences of this new framework is the entry of Spain to UNESCO and later at the UN. It is in this economic context that can be activated in different school building plans to the Franco regime sought to promote from even before the end of civil war and that until then had not moved from paper. The first school achievements of the regime can be considered a result of a plan, not scattered and isolated actions are the Labour Institutes, schools that should be on one side to a Spanish population still largely agrarian and secondly prepare the industrial workforce for the times to come. The first construction plans were launched at the end of the decade of the forties powered by OPUS DEI founding member and Secretary General José María Albareda CSIC who commissioned the first centers to his friend and fellow member of OPUS DEI Miguel Fisac. The generalization of the same all over the country came in 1953 after the Labour Institutes Competition organized by the Falangist Carlos Rodriguez de Valcarcel, Director General of Labor Education. The organizers were advised by the same Miguel Fisac and the Swiss architect William Dunkel, a specialist in school architecture was part of the jury. The contest was a success and participation among the winners were Carlos de Miguel and Mariano Rodriguez Avial, José Antonio Corrales, the team with Gili Orol Bohigas, Martorell Basso and Miguel Fisac, Emilio Larrodera, Francisco Rafael Echenique and Aburto. Many of the winners were commissioned to carry out the projects for construction. This is the case of Rafael Aburto received orders from Labour Institutes of Elche and Orihuela, the first for industrial mode and the second agricultural The archives of the Office of Works of the City of Elche and the General Archive of the University of Navarra keeping the personal archive of Rafael Aburto, have documented extensively the draft Elche and Orihuela lesser extent. The study of the documentation and especially the plans for the project, have shown excellent graphic work beyond the purely projective. Of particular note the graphical construction drawings and installations with multiple approaches and partial views always accompanied by numerous legends. Particularly striking is the organization of the different views in the planes away from rigid approaches. The views, only dihedral, twist, accommodate and even overlap each other with evident didactic intention. The presence of funds (drawing textures of walls and floors) is almost constant and transmits a will explaining the project organization. As regards the graphical realization formal solutions of plans, elevations and sections, plans and solutions refer to images that Miguel Fisac had begun in his first Institutes and other proposals can be seen in the same contest and Labour Institutes s in other contests of schools disclosed Architecture magazine in the mid-fifties. The magnificent graphic realization of the project documentation architect speak of a profound knowledge of his craft that the shortage of post-war Spain and from the same tradition strives to renew its formal language and design activities, such as the use of new construction materials. The graphic language used on these projects becomes the best testimony to this positioning.