César Ortiz-Echagüe

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César Ortiz-Echagüe Rubio (born January 13, 1927 in Madrid ) is a Spanish architect , university professor and senior official of the Roman Catholic church association Opus Dei . He had been an employee of the founder Josemaría Escrivá since 1945 , built his father's Seat plants in Spain in the 1950s , was ordained a priest after Escrivá's death in 1983 and headed the German section of Opus Dei as a prelate from 1984 to 1996 .

Life

César Ortiz-Echagüe was the fourth of eight children to the engineer, photographer and entrepreneur José Ortiz-Echagüe (founder of the aircraft manufacturer CASA and the car manufacturer Seat ). His uncle was the painter Antonio Ortiz-Echagüe .

After attending the German School in Madrid, he studied architecture at the Madrid Architecture School (ETSAM) from 1947 . With his final project he won the annual prize of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in 1952 . He then worked as an architect in Madrid. From 1955 to 1967 he worked in a partner office with Rafael Echaide. He built the architecture school at the Opus Dei University of Navarra in Pamplona and became an associate professor there in 1967. In 1977 he gave up his profession and devoted himself entirely to management tasks at Opus Dei.

He has received several awards for his buildings. In 1957 he received the US Reynolds Memorial Award for aluminum structures from the American Institute of Architects and in 1974 he became a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts . From 1962 he worked for the Swiss architecture magazine Werk for more than a decade , for which he wrote articles on contemporary Spanish architecture in German.

The buildings by Ortiz-Echagüe and Echaide followed the rational architecture concept of Mies van der Rohe . The SEAT plants in Barcelona and numerous SEAT buildings in Madrid and Seville were built according to their designs. For the Banco Popular Español , whose management belonged to Opus-Dei, they planned the new main branch in Madrid and other branches in 1958, with new technical and aesthetic standards being implemented. Later he designed the buildings for the Technical Drawing School Tajamar (ITGT) in Madrid and other university projects, thereby setting standards for university architecture in Spain.

  • SEAT laboratories Barcelona

  • SEAT plant in Barcelona (Zona Franca) (1954–56)

  • Banco Popular Español Madrid

Opus Dei

In 1945, César Ortiz met Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer , the founder of Opus Dei . In the same year he joined Opus Dei. From then on, both worked closely together, both at the headquarters of the regional management in Spain and in Rome, where Escrivá had lived and managed his work since 1946. After Escrivá's death in 1975, his successor, Álvaro del Portillo , appointed him to the central management of the lay organization, which in 1982 was elevated to a so-called personal prelature of the Roman Catholic Church by John Paul II . Ortiz studied philosophy and theology, and received in 1983 by Pope John Paul II. In St. Peter's Basilica , the ordination .

From 1984 to 1996 César Ortiz was regional vicar of the Opus Dei prelature in Germany, based in Cologne. In 1992 he was appointed papal honorary prelate by Pope John Paul II.

Fonts

literature

  • La Arquitectura Espanola Actual , Ediciones Rialp, SA 1965
  • Comedores de la SEAT , Servicio Publicaciones ETSA 1999
  • Cincuenta años después , Servicio Publicaciones ETSA 2001
  • Klaus Englert : Promotion and exit. Cesar Ortiz-Echagüe - An architect who has become a priest looks back , article from: Baumeister , vol. 110, no. 6, 2013, pp. 12–15 [1]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Head: César Ortiz , Opus Dei Information Office, accessed on February 15, 2016
  2. ↑ Ortiz-Echagüe, César y Echaide, Rafael , University of Navarra, accessed on February 17, 2016 (Spanish)
  3. ↑ a b “Without fear of tackling big things”. Interview with César Ortiz, Opus Dei Information Office, accessed on February 15, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Ortiz-Echagüe, César
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ortiz-Echagüe Rubio, César (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish architect, Roman Catholic prelate
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Madrid