Artrópodos y Omatidios.
El proyecto de Jorge Oteiza para el Edificio Beatriz, una historia inconclusa

Date: 2009
Author: Eduardo Delgado Orusco
Publisher: Fundación Museo Jorge Oteiza
Pages: 57

The Beatriz building, located in the heart of the neighbourhood of Salamanca in Madrid consisted in a profound renovation of one of the blocks of the neighbourhood’s rigid matrix, substituting the old Convent of the Jerónimas founded by Beatriz Galindo. Consequently, at the end of the works the architect Eleuterio Población called for a restricted sculpture competition to define the building’s corner on the Velazquez and José Ortega y Gasset streets.

The winner of the competition was the sculptor Jorge de Oteiza whose proposal, beyond its plastic value, provided a particularly lucid interpretation of the building. Indeed, the peculiar configuration of the architectural ensemble directly derived from its constructive structure- a resistant central nucleus and a load-bearing façade made of prefabricated pieces of armed concrete- conferred to the exterior skin the appearance of an “organism keeping jealously something in its interior” and that Oteiza identified as the reason for its own design.