Abstract
This thesis explores the life and works of the Catalan architect Xavier Busquets Sindreu (1917-1990), focusing on his earlier professional stages, the exceptional training he acquired in São Paulo between 1951 and 1955, and how he adapted this knowledge to the Catalan reality of the time when he returned to Barcelona. The research has been mainly based on the study of the documentary collection kept by the Historical Archive of the Chamber of Architects of Catalonia, a valuable material containing many of the works built by Busquets. The complex reality of São Paulo during the 1950s has been approached through secondary sources. In order to contextualize other aspects of his biography, we have also researched in other institutions, such as the Barcelona School of Architecture, the Royal Catalan Academy of Fine Arts of Sant Jordi, the Monastery of Montserrat and the Ministry of the Army. As Busquets had no direct descendants and his most personal documentation was destroyed, we finally have sought the testimony of people who knew him professionally or were part of his family circle. As a first son of the well-known architect Guillem Busquets Vautravers and Maria Sindreu i Oliva, members of the Barcelona bourgeoisie at the beginning of the twentieth century, young Busquets grew up in a Germanophile family environment characterized by language proficiency and intellectual and artistic inquisitiveness. But his academic career lacked perseverance and was interrupted on several occasions by a controversial participation in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. After the war, and already a qualified architect, Busquets arrived in Brazil, where he came to work with two renowned international professionals in architecture: the Polish Lucjan Korngold and the German Adolf Franz Heep, both coming from a solid branch of the European architectural modernity as disciples of undisputed masters such as Adolf Meyer or Le Corbusier. After experiencing the throbbing momentum of São Paulo and participating in projects such as the Lausanne, Lucerne and Araraúnas buildings, Busquets had to reconsider the lessons of this training when returning to Catalonia, modulating this exceptional basis and starting a process of adaptation and consolidation in search of a professional practice of his own. This would lead to significant works, such as the Bellvitge housing estate, the residential units on Escoles Pies, Dalmases or Carulla streets in Barcelona and a series of corporate buildings such as the seat of the Chamber of Architects of Catalonia in Plaça Nova or the company headquarters for Caixa d’Estalvis i Mont de Pietat and Mutua General de Seguros on Diagonal Avenue, Sandoz on Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, the Société Générale de Banque in Plaça Catalunya, or Hispano Olivetti in Madrid. These works came along with other remarkable events, such as Busquets’ involvement in one of the first meetings of Team X, the III Hispano-American Biennial of Art and the founding of the early Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, alongside his collection of pieces of art, designed to bedeck the unique spaces of his home. A man of the world and cultured architect, always attentive to international current affairs, Busquets practiced a sometimes hybrid and heterodox architecture that raises issues such as the modernization of the architectural office, the role of arts in architecture, the legacy of European rationalism, the efforts to rationalize and industrialize construction or the technological references to the American-shifted International Style, among others. Therefore, Busquets has not always been easy to fit into the local narrative of modern Catalan architecture during the second half of the twentieth century. But for these and other reasons that the thesis tries to show, we advocate that Busquets’ work, which was extensive and profound, may be of an interest greater than what it may have risen so far.
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