1928-2011

A pure rationalist, Eleuterio Población Knappe was born in Huelva and graduated from the Madrid School of Architecture. Among his first projects were the Watefront Promenade of Tenerife and the Savings Bank of Seville, although most of his works concentrate in the Spanish capital, with examples like the housing and offices in Parque de las Naciones (1968), his first high-rise building, where he set up his studio; the Eurobuilding tower (1970), consisting of two vertical pieces over a large base of communal services, adjusted to a pedestrian scale; the Beatriz building (1976), with a facade covered with a reticular screen; the Endesa building (1977), whose enclosure is formed by a metallic industrialized shell; or the headquarters of the CESCE (1979), former Banco del Norte, with a monumental character dominated by an orthogonal module that organizes the whole building. Author also of several hotels for the Melià chain, of auditoriums and residential and office buildings in Andalusia and other regions, Población was one of the key figures of Spanish modernity during the 1960s and 1970s.