Born in Ceuta, Fernando Moreno Barberá went to secondary school in Madrid and received awards for his impeccable academic record. He entered the Madrid School of Architecture and, upon finishing his degree, obtained a joint scholarship from the Higher Council for Scientific Research, the Humboldt Stiftung in Berlin, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austanschdienst to continue his education in Germany. Moreno Barberá arrived in Berlin in 1940, in the wake of the Spanish Civil War and at the height of the Nazi regime. His stay in Germany lasted throughout the Second World War, and he spent time at two schools specializing in urban planning: the Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg in Berlin and, the following year, in the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart. In Berlin he learned the value of precision and regulations, and the importance of investigation, not only in formal terms but above all with regard to technique and construction. As Moreno Barberá put it, good architecture should be based on a precise balance and excellence in the technical solutions used. Only then can it attain formal beauty and even stir people’s emotions.

Between 1941 and 1944, he combined his education with the role of attaché at the Spanish Embassy in Berlin. In those years, he also worked in the studio of Paul Bonatz, a renowned architect who was critical of the empty monumentalism that characterized the architecture of the Third Reich and sympathetic to the precepts of functionalism and the modern movement.

After his four years in Germany, upon his return to Spain, Moreno Barberá dedicated his efforts to promoting knowledge of modern architecture through lectures and publications that had an influence on architects such as Luis Gutiérrez Soto or Alejandro de la Sota. In those early years, some of his unbuilt projects – such as his competition entries for the cross in the Valle de los Caídos or the bullring in Jaén – illustrated an attempt to import the ideas that he had assimilated in Germany, in a climate that was contrary to architecture with ties to the modern movement. These projects, while modern, incorporated elements of a historicist language, with a certain engagement with the prevailing language of the regime. His first major built project, the Calvo Sotelo Research Centre in Legazpi (1945), also represented an attempt to seek out this balance or a possibilistic vision of modernity.

As was usual for architects of the time, his work was not limited only to the exercise of the profession. Moreno Barberá was also a teacher at the Institute of Cinematographic Experiences and Research and an advisor for the National Tourism Board. For this last organization, responsible for building and managing new hotels, he designed a series of facilities such as hostels and inns, with an architectural language that was sprinkled with historicisms and localisms, but with design mechanisms and functionalities that were clearly modern.

In the 1950s, the country’s situation began to change with the opening of the regime to international influences, which burst onto the architectural scene in the form of publications, lectures, etc. Moreno Barberá expressed a special interest in American architecture, especially that of Richard Neutra and Mies van der Rohe. At the end of the decade, thanks to a grant, he was able to travel to the United States where he met both those men.

These influences came together in his innumerable designs for educational buildings across the Spanish territory. His designs already expressed an unvarnished modernity, combining European influences – especially Le Corbusier – in the use of reinforced concrete with American influences in the extensive use of steel and glass. The influence of Mies was not only expressed through materiality; the courtyard also became an essential element in the organization of his floor plans.

These influences were incorporated into his architecture in an increasingly radical way. In some cases, his buildings offer an image that is somewhat foreign or less connected to the paths followed by local architecture. Perhaps for this reason, and for the scant interest he showed in his work being disseminated in specialized media, the figure of Moreno Barberá did not end up connecting with local architectural criticism or the academic and intellectual environments that feed into it.

Also in those years, he began experimenting with prototypical residential neighbourhoods, using standardized construction elements made from concrete. Despite this clear modernity, Moreno Barberá introduced subtle elements that differentiated the buildings based on their geographical or cultural context. The strict Miesian geometry gradually gave way to the incorporation of elements of a more organic nature, as can be seen in the Centro de Universidades Laborales in San Blas, where the hexagon was adopted as the geometric foundation for the project.

Influenced by the large American corporate architecture firms – which pioneered the International Style – he reorganised his office with a clear business mentality, eventually employing more than 200 architects. From the end of the 1970s, this allowed him to take on large-scale projects in countries such as Kuwait, Nigeria and Jordan and to incorporate new influences such as that of the architect Louis Khan.

Despite his enormous production scattered across the country, and his great contribution to architecture associated with education and universities, the figure of Fernando Moreno Barberá is little known in the panorama of the modern movement in Spain. His work has not been given the attention from historiographers that it no doubt deserves, practically relegating it to oblivion. In this sense, the incorporation of a fair number of his buildings into the register of DOCOMOMO Ibérico was a turning point in the appraisal and preservation of his work. In 2006, a monograph and an exhibition contributed to improving knowledge of his career.

Biography by Roger Subirà

Bibliography

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