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JOSEP LLUÍS SERT: that man
The headquarters of the Official College of Architects plays host to a retrospective of the Catalan master’s work.
The city of Cambridge (Massachusetts) contains Josep Lluís Sert’s most important architectural legacy. However, Ibiza holds Sert’s biggest ruin: the “ciudad del ocio” in Cala d’en Serra, a concrete monstrosity which no one dares knock down and which serves as a great car park in summer months; thanks to this half completed building, there is shade in which to leave the car.
Sert, the first great student and defender of traditional Ibizan architecture, accepted to build in the idyllic Cala d’en Serra and, in the 30s, he suggested pulling down the ‘Raval’ in Barcelona because he considered it “an unhealthy tumour with no possible remedy”. Josep Lluís Sert is Spain’s most important architect of the 20th Century, he introduced modern architecture to our country. Misunderstood, a man of his times…and someone who, amongst many successes, also made his mistakes.
The exposition ‘Sert. Mig segle d’arquitectura. 1928-1979’ is magnificent because it explains to us, in an easy and didactic way, who Sert was, what he did and why he is so important. The display combines rigour with entertainment and offers us personal documents, movies of the day, letters and plans of some of his most relevant works. The explanations, that can be read on informative panels, are complemented with models to the delight of the youngest public. I was like a kid myself before the scaled down versions of the ‘Fundación Marguerite’ and ‘Aimé Maeght’, the ‘Fundación Maeght’ or the ‘Peabody’ building and I imagined myself the size of Tom Thumb wandering and wondering at these impressive structures.
Sert has always seen the architect as a professional who is at the service of the society in which he or she settles. Humans live in houses – forgive stating the obvious – and the homes we build are our universe, the way we blend into the landscape and transform it, the way we humanise it.
Thus, the importance of architecture which is ‘human’ and which takes into account the necessities of the times. What would Sert say, Sert the defender of the traditional Ibizan house with their pure lines which was precursor to Bauhaus, if he took a walk around Cala de Bou? Would he have a dizzy spell or, as he wanted to do with the ‘Raval’ in Barcelona, would he take a bulldozer to it and not leave a single stone standing?