Fernando Martínez Garcia-Ordoñez, Salas (Asturias), 1922-Valencia, 2015

Juan Maria Dexeus Beatty, Madrid, 1924-Valencia,1995

Fernando Martínez García-Ordoñez (GO) and Juan María Dexeus Beatty (DB), both with ties to Opus Dei, founded the architecture studio GO.DB. in 1962. Later, they were joined by Julio Bellot, José Manuel Herrero and, in 1967, Francisco Pérez Marsá.

Fernando Martínez García-Ordoñez studied architecture at the Madrid School, finishing his studies in 1955. In 1958, after the Riada [1957 Valencia flood], he settled in Valencia as a member of the technical office drafting the Plan Sur [Southern Plan] for the city, a large-scale infrastructure that left a huge scar in the farmland south of Valencia, which has still not been restored. For Fernando Martínez García-Ordoñez, it was his first contact with the construction of large infrastructures, which fuelled his interest in technology. GO.DB. was pioneering in industrialized construction for housing in Valencia.

Fernando Martínez García-Ordoñez’s first project was the Guadalaviar school (1957-1960), included in the Docomomo Ibérico registry and a benchmark for modern architecture in Valencia.

In 1974, he became a member of the Academy of San Carlos, with a reply given by the architect Luis Gay. In 2006, he was named Master of Architecture by the COACV.

Juan Maria Dexeus Beatty also studied architecture at the Madrid School, finishing in 1957. From 1968 to 1972, he taught Construction Materials and Aesthetics and Composition at the Valencia School of Architecture. In 1976, he wrote Existencia, Presencia y Arquitectura, a book in which he analyses the characteristics of the built environment.

GO.DB. was characterized by its large size, more than 200 people, and by its unique organizational structure, similar to OTAISA and the large American studios that Fernando Martínez García-Ordoñez had visited in the 1960s.

GO.DB. was a multidisciplinary studio, with a remarkable capacity for design and management. It was conceived as a double-studio with offices in two locations: one in the city centre, where clients were received, and one in the municipality of El Puig, where the designs were developed and experiments could be carried out using new materials and technologies.

In El Puig, the team was surrounded by nature in a community atmosphere like at Wright’s office in Taliesin. The facilities included enough space for machinery, including a crane that could be used in GO.DB.’s experiments with prefabricated concrete, based on their experience with the engineers from the Plan Sur office. The proposal developed for the construction of industrialized housing was based on the idea of an inhabitable beam, like the segments of prestressed concrete bridges. The studio patented the system called Modul-Arch, and its M-IV prototype was used in the construction of eight social housing units (1967-1968) in Campanar.

Notable among GO.DB.’s production is the work included in the Docomomo Ibérico registry, namely: the Virgen del Carmen housing complex (1958), their first work, developed by the Obra Sindical del Hogar y de Arquitectura and the Valencia City Council; the Cadahia complex (1962); the La Paz complex (1961-1966) in Murcia, with Roberto Soler Boix, Vicente Valls Abad and Víctor Bernal; and the church of Our Lady of Loreto with its parish centre (1967-1968) in Jávea, which was a finalist for the 1969 National Architecture Prize.

In addition to the aforementioned buildings, other projects designed by the studio also left their mark on the city of Valencia. They experimented with small-format prefabricated elements for their façades, offering formal solutions based on vibrant surfaces that broke away from traditional architecture. They called it “styling”, and examples include the Torre Ciudadela building (1963), Vicoman-Rex (1963), the Luz complex (1966), the building in Plaza de América (1966), the renovation of the Guadalaviar school (1968), the buildings for the Paz y Seguridad cooperative (1969) and the Bankisur building (1977) on calle Lauria, among others.

One further aspect of GO.DB.’s experimentation was their industrialized construction with non-recoverable plastic formwork, which they called Modulares Espaciales (MO.ES.) [Spatial Modules]. The method consisted of using elements that resolved both structure and envelope in a unitary way. It was used in the single-family home for Bellot Porta (1974).

In 1982, the GO.DB. studio was disbanded following the project for the Nuevo Centro shopping centre. Fernando Martínez Garcia-Ordoñez began a new solo career focused, among other things, on the study of prefabricated housing prototypes. He developed the Albatros patent to respond to situations of emergency housing.

Biography by María Teresa Palomares Figueres

Bibliography

• PALOMARES FIGUERES, María Teresa, “GO.DB. Arquitectos. Una teoría estética”, in IBORRA BERNAD, Fernando, coord., El arquitecto, su formación y su ciudad, Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos/Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, 2020, pp. 86-94.
• PALOMARES FIGUERES, María Teresa, PORTÁLES MAÑANÓS, Ana, “Paisaje cultural moderno. Arquitectura residencial modulada: la prefabricación de GO.DB”, in TAVERNER PASTOR, Francisco, dir., Historia de la ciudad (VII), Colegio Territorial de Arquitectos de València, Valencia 2015, pp. 116-127.
• MESALLES, Félix, SUMOY, Lluc, coords., La arquitectura del sol = Sunland Architecture, Colegios Oficiales de Arquitectos de Catalunya, Comunidad Valenciana, Illes Balears, Murcia, Almería, Granada, Málaga y Canarias, Barcelona, 2002.
• PEÑIN IBÁÑEZ, Alberto, Valencia 1874-1957. Ciudad, arquitectura y arquitectos, Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de la Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, 1978, pp.181, 200, 205, 223, 224, 244.
• MARTÍNEZ GARCIA-ORDOÑEZ, Fernando, “Sobre la percepción estética, discurso de ingreso en la Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos”, in Archivo de Arte Valenciano 47, 1976, p. 100.
• DEXEUS BEATTY, Juan Maria, Existencia, presencia, arquitectura, Bello, Valencia, 1976.
• MARTÍNEZ GARCIA-ORDOÑEZ, Fernando, “La renovación urbana en Valencia”, in Boletín Ateneo Mercantil, 1959.