Hipótesis dibujada II. Sáenz de Oíza: geometría tridimensional en el proyecto de la capilla Santa María del Pozo / Congreso Pioneros de la Arquitectura Moderna Española VI,
Spain, 2021 [By
Eva Hurtado and Silvia
Canosa]
The Chapel of Santa María del Pozo, built in 1958 by the Spanish architect Sáenz de Oíza for the first urban plan of Entrevías during the Franco dictatorship, has only one published photograph of the original model. At its inception, the chapel had a complex programme as the civic and symbolic centre of a very poor neighbourhood, whose social activism was linked to the leadership of the Jesuit Llanos and his community of suburban residents. The chapel was an experimental architectural proposal, characterised by a remarkable constructive rigour, whose conceptual power overcame other limitations. The oblique grid, superimposed on the orthogonality of Entrevías itself, appropriates the site through a series of haunched portal frames, large continuous decks and rhomboid spaces that remain today despite their partial demolition. This was an important moment in Oíza's work, in which he rehearsed variations on his previous work, and a little-known project that offers the opportunity to understand his teaching in greater depth. This research was proposed in order to decipher and draw an approximation of the chapel, as close to the original as circumstances would allow,
and to reopen it to the public.
