Juan José Estellés Ceba had a connection to art since his childhood. His father, a doctor, had worked as an art critic for the magazine El Pueblo and instilled in his son an interest in the visual arts; his grandfather, the owner of an ornamental plaster workshop, introduced him to drawing and painting.

He was trained at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza [Free Institution of Education] in Madrid, where his classes in Art History, taught at the Prado Museum, awakened his artistic sensitivity from a very young age.

In Madrid, he learned from the Capitol building, the pavilions in the University City, the nursery at the Instituto Escuela [School Institute] and the La Isla swimming pool.

The Spanish Civil War cut short his education, and he was actively involved in the fighting. Along with his father, he joined the Republican Army as an officer and at the end of the war he was imprisoned; as a result he did not begin studying architecture until 1941.

He studied between Madrid and Barcelona, where he finished his degree in 1948. According to Estellés, the curriculum at the School of Architecture was centred on the classicism of Noucentisme, cut off from the pioneering examples of modern architecture such as the Anti-Tuberculous Sanatorium and other projects by the GATPAC. Thus, he was left to discover Le Corbusier on his own, at the suggestion of his father, and was impressed by his work.

After earning his degree he returned to Valencia, and in 1957 he joined the Parpalló group, directed by Miguel Aguilera Cerní, in the company of other architects, industrial designers and interior designers. He published some of his designs in the group’s magazine, called Arte Vivo, including the Gran Hotel Peñón de Ifach (1957) as well articles, like the one dedicated to the UNESCO building in Paris by M. Breuer, who became the biggest influence on his work.

Estellés earned a PhD in Architecture in 1965 and, in 1966, he was named president of the Culture Commission for the Architects’ Association. He taught at the Valencia School of Architecture as a professor of Composition, from 1967 to 1971 and from 1979 to 1987.

In 1999, he was named Valencian Master of Architecture by the Architects’ Association. In 2005, he was made an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos. In 2011, he was awarded the Lluís Guarner Prize by the Generalitat Valenciana.

His first designs were single-family homes in different styles, including his own home in Godella (1961), which is remarkable, with nods to Marcel Breuer in the layout of the walls.

Among his designs included in the Docomomo Ibérico registry, the earliest is the Santo Tomás de Villanueva Residential College (1960). Several artists from the Parpalló group joined forces for the artistic design and the furniture. The project was selected for and exhibited in the exhibition Art i modernitat als Països Catalans, which opened in Berlin in 1978. After the construction of this building, Estellés received new commissions for religious architecture, many of which are also included in the Docomomo Ibérico registry, including the seminary for the Marist Brothers in Castelnovo (1962); the San José parish centre (1962), a building in which the architect intended to combine the three most symbolic typological elements in Christianity – basilica, bell tower and baptistery; and the La Anunciación school (1964).

The work of Juanjo Estellés also includes significant contributions to the residential typology. After his first projects, such as the building at calle Reina Doña Germana 12, where he exhibited what he had learned at the Barcelona School, his later works include the La Ducal complex (1961) and the La Glorieta building (1966), both in the Docomomo Ibérico registry. The first is a holiday complex, where the community space is the focal point, with gardens and a swimming pool that are open to the city, without fencing. The second example is a building between party walls located in the centre of the city of Valencia, in which, in addition to the distribution of the floor plan, the façade composition in horizontal bands is worthy of note.

In 1967, Juanjo Estellés built the Recovery and Rehabilitation Centre for the Federación de Montepíos y Mutualidades de Levante [Federation of Mutual Aid Societies], with structural influences from the work of Marcel Breuer and typological influences from designs by Alvar Aalto.

The Levante Football Stadium, included in the Docomomo Ibérico registry, was built between 1968 and 1969. During the construction, a wide gallery was eliminated, a street of sorts that surrounded the entire stadium at the vertical halfway point for the distribution of spectators.

It is worth making one last comment regarding his work in the recovery of heritage architecture. In 1985, he collaborated with M. Portaceli on the restoration of the Palace of the Marqués de Campo; in 1986, he restored the church of Santos Juanes in Valencia; and, in 1993, he co-directed the rehabilitation of the Sagunto Theatre, designed by Manuel Portaceli and Giorgio Grassi, recovering, among others, the original volumetric configuration.

Biography by María Teresa Palomares Figueres

Bibliography

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• ROIG, M., “Juan José Estellés Ceba (1920-2012). Se agota una larga vida dedicada a la exigencia intelectual y a la arquitectura”, in VPOR2 15, 2012, pg. 29.
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