Mariano Garrigues Diaz-Cañabate. The ephemeral elegance of an alternative modernity

New publication by Eduardo and edited by Recolectores Urbanos now available: Mariano Garrigues Díaz-Cañabate. The ephemeral elegance of an alternative modernity

The life of the architect Mariano Garrigues Díaz-Cañabate spans practically the entire 20th century, long and fruitful, but quiet, discreet, dedicated to his two passions, his family and his profession. Like so many architects of his generation, he was never particularly interested because his work was present in the media, and that explains his general ignorance and his weak position in the face of the changes caused by time, to the point that a large part of his buildings have been drastically transformed. Graduated in June 1928 and registered in the Official College of Architects of Madrid, two months after its constitution, his many knowledges will immediately reflect in his projects, the Anglo-Saxon references being patent, as in the children's library project with which he won, along with Gabriel de la Torriente, the National Prize for Architecture, and also Nordic. Think of the headquarters of the Foreign Bank of Spain, the construction of the Embassy of the United States or the House of Sweden, "a building of the future", as his disciple and collaborator Federico Melendo writes in these pages. For this reason, aware of the meaning of their father's work, which they had been discovering mainly after his death on March 26, 1994, the Garrigues Carnicer family decided to take the first step towards valuing it, donating the architect's professional archive to Fundación Arquitectura COAM, in order to put it at the service of research and spread its legacy. However, from that very moment, his children understood that they had to go further, committing themselves to carrying out a scientific study that would place the work of Mariano Garrigues in the place it deserves in the history of Madrid and Spanish architecture, as a result which is this book coordinated by Eduardo.