Juan Antonio García Solera was born in Alacant in 1924. He earned his degree in architecture in Madrid in 1953 and died in the city of his birth in 2019. He is part of the second generation of architects belonging to the modern movement, who finished their studies after the end of the Spanish Civil War. His early architecture explored Mediterranean formalisms in parallel with Scandinavian and Catalan influences, which can be seen in the Hostal San Juan (1955), with its large sloping roofs, and in the Maroto House (1957), with its porches, pergolas, and interior courtyard. At the end of the 1950s, he designed two works with ties to modern orthodoxy: the Industrial School (Alicante, 1958-1965), where the three separate rectangular volumes are associated to specific uses (teaching, administration and workshops), and the social housing for the Sant Francesc de Sales neighbourhood (Elda, 1957-1968), covering more than 50,000 m2, with facilities – square, park, school, church, and market – and with free-standing blocks of different heights and calculated orientations, in addition to a hierarchy of roads and a commercial street lined with porticoes. In the residential building on carrer del Duc de Saragossa (Alacant, 1958) he introduced new materials and used free asymmetric compositions with their origins in neo-plasticism.

The most notable designs came in the 1960s. We have selected a fundamental tetralogy from his career, in which a committed modernity is nuanced by his personal contributions. It is formed by the Vistahermosa clinic (1960), no longer standing, which was published in Arquitectura; the Vistahermosa residential complex (1962-1966), published in Temas de Arquitectura, a housing development of more than 400 homes in open blocks of different typologies and heights above a varied landscape; the CESA educational building (1965-1971), with Miesian echoes in isolated pavilions connected by a system of pergolas and surrounded by a pine forest; and the Llar Provincial (1968-1976), an educational complex including student residences, run by a religious community, with uses that are differentiated in the geometry of the floor plans (orthogonal and circular). All four projects are located in Alacant. During this decade, he designed intriguing religious architecture, such as the church of Sant Francesc de Sales in Elda, with Scandinavian reminiscences; the Immaculada Concepció in Torre del Pla, with a rectangular floorplan and ceiling made from a grid structure of metal bars; the chapel in the Vistahermosa complex, an exposed brick pavilion with a single-slope shed roof that takes clear cues from the Sirens’ chapel in Otaniemi; and the (large) chapel of the Llar Provincial, with influences from Fisac, both in certain decorative elements and in the roof solution using Fisac’s “bone-beams”. Along with three notable single-family residences ─ Pérez Devesa (1962), Knopff (1964) and Tovar (1964), and some blocks of flats ─ Verge del Socors (1964) and the El Parque building (1965), there are also a number of relevant projects associated with tourism. In Alacant, he designed two residential developments: the Maralic ─ Platja de Sant Joan (1963-1978) ─ made up of three orthogonal blocks with units accessed via a corridor, and the Las Torres complex ─ La Albufereta (1968) ─ more unique for its metabolist forms, with exposed concrete and green tiles, resulting from the combination in plan of housing modules organized by a grid pattern. There are also tourism-related designs in Benidorm: the Don Pancho Hotel (1969) and the Cervantes flats (1971), based on sharp vertical rectangles in exposed concrete that emerge above a podium.

García Solera was head of the technical team for the preparation of the Master Plan for Alacant (1966-1974), which involved the comprehensive reorganization of the territory with a focus on the neighbouring municipalities. It was approved, although with limited time for its full implementation, and it influenced subsequent planning: Via Parc, Gran Via, and Urbanova. At the end of the 1970s, following a trip to Finland, his admiration for Alvar Aalto showed through in the halls and rooms of his design for the College of Physicians (1981-1985). However, his most significant work from this period is the National Police Academy in Ávila (1979-1985), for which he designed a citadel that respects the rural environment and the historic city. Beginning in the late 20th century, he responded to the demands for cultural centres for the Provincial Council in the area of Campoamor. In the 1990s, he proposed an auditorium and a museum; only the former was built (2011), with great quality in the interior finishes. This period also gave rise to the School of Optics (1998), with which he realized his dream of constructing a building on the campus of the University of Alacant, where he worked in its early days renovating the Rabasa military camp for teaching use (1968).

The Architects’ Association named him a Valencian Master of Architecture in 1996, and the University of Alacant awarded him the Maisonnave Award in 2015. The local press, upon his death, considered him the father of modern architecture in Alacant.

Biography by Justo Oliva Meyer and Andrés Martínez Medina

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