García de Paredes / La-Hoz, Aquinas Student Dormitory, Madrid (Spain)

Graduating as an architect from the Madrid School of Architecture in 1950 and entering into partnership with his classmate and lifelong friend Rafael de La-Hoz, José María García de Paredes decided, despite their initial success, to apply for a residency in the Spanish Academy in Rome, in order to reflect on where his generation stood in relation to the modernization of Spain in the combined aftermath of the Civil War and the Second World War. In this regard, a parallel situation was obtained in Italy, which was also attempting to emerge from the disastrous effects of war.

Despite this similarity, it is clear from García de Paredes’s early practice that he and his colleagues would be profoundly influenced by the culture of architecture and industrial design emanating from postwar Milan, in particular from Gio Ponti, who was at once an accomplished designer, a cultural theorist and a publicist. They were also influenced by equally seminal discourses promulgated by Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Bruno Zevi...[+]