José Enrique Marrero Regalado

José Enrique Marrero Regalado (born February 6, 1897 in Granadilla de Abona , Tenerife , Spain ; † January 17, 1956 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife ) was a Spanish architect.

Life

School and study time

José Enrique Marrero Regalado was born on February 6th or 8th, 1897 as the son of Dolores Regalado Regalado and José Marrero Díaz in Granadilla de Abona. His mother was a teacher, his father a businessman. He had four older sisters. He lived with one of these sisters during his school years from 1907 to 1910, first in Alcoy then in Alicante . From 1910 he attended the high school in San Cristóbal de La Laguna , from 1913 the preparatory courses for the civil engineering school at the Academia de Mazas in Madrid. From 1919 he studied architecture at the Escuela de Arquitectura de Madrid. In 1925 he passed the final exam.

Amurrio train station

Work on the mainland

After some casual employment in Madrid , he began in 1929 to work for the Compañía de ferrocarriles del Norte de España , a railway company in northern Spain, for which he designed stations and other service buildings in a local style. At the same time he worked, e.g. Partly together with other architects on plans for multi-storey residential buildings that were built in Bilbao . In 1931 he made a trip to France and Germany, where he was particularly impressed by the new Gare de l'Est in Paris and the Stuttgart train station .

Edificio Siboney housing complex in Santander

He showed a particular interest in German modern architecture . After this trip he designed the "Edificio Siboney", an apartment complex in Santander .

Work in Santa Cruz de Tenerife from 1932 until the Civil War

On September 15, 1932, an article he had written with the title Hacia el estilo Aquitectónico Regional (Towards a regional architectural style) appeared in the newspaper La Tarde, and in 1933 in the magazine Hoy another with the title Expresión de la Arquitectura en Tenerife (Expression of the architecture of Tenerife). In these texts he puts his views on an architecture that should be based on regional tradition. In 1933 he returned to Tenerife to finally settle there. In addition to his assignments for private individuals and the Círculo Mercantil de Tenerife (Chamber of Commerce and Industry), he became the official architect of the Cabildo Insular de Tenerife and thus responsible for the new building of the Palacio Insular sede del Cabildo de Tenerife, the seat of the island administration and government of Tenerife.

Work in Santa Cruz de Tenerife after the civil war

After 1938, Marrero took over political posts at the provincial level. He was temporarily chairman of the Mancomunidad Interinsular de Cabildos and was commissioner for housing construction at the provincial level. As part of this activity, he published in 1939 in the Official Gazette of the Province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and in various newspapers Normas para la construcción de viviendas (guidelines for housing). These guidelines were supplemented by a series of sketches showing different versions of windows, doors, window grilles, balconies and entire facades of single-family houses. In his work as an architect, there was no break with the changed situation after the Civil War, he continued designing residential and commercial buildings and public buildings both in the style of Racionalismo and in Neocanariostil . In 1943 he fell ill and stayed temporarily in Madrid. A biography that he wrote during this time reached back to 1934. However, it was never published. He traveled through Europe and America for the last three years of his life. After returning from a trip to Mexico and Cuba, he died on January 17, 1956 in his home in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. He was buried in his hometown of Granadilla de Abona. One month after his death, an article he had written entitled “Nueva Arquitectura Canaria” (New Canarian Architecture) appeared in the “Diario de Las Palmas” in which he made final thoughts on a neo-Canarian style that he had always defended.

The architect's own residential and office building

style

From 1932 at the latest, Marrero's designs are stylistically simplified and divided into two groups:

• Buildings that are stylistically based on modern architecture in the sense of the Bauhaus and rationalism . (The term Racionalismo arquitectónico in the Spanish language does not necessarily establish a political reference to the Italian rationalists.) He had designed his own residential and office building in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the style of Racionalismo .
• Buildings that have their own style based on local traditions, eclectic recourse, especially on elements of the Baroque and, in the case of public buildings, on classical monumental architecture. He defended this regionally oriented style Nueva Arquitectura Canaria (Neocanario) again and again in his publications from 1932 until after his death.

Marrero presented different designs for the buildings of the Círculo Mercantil de Tenerife (1932) and for the Cabildo Insular de Tenerife (1933). On the one hand, there were clearly rationalist designs, Some of them were worked out by his colleague Rudolf Schneider, as well as drafts that contained a regionalist component. In both cases the neo-Canarian style versions were chosen. The buildings were not completed until 1943 and 1940 respectively.

Works

In addition to a large number of z. Marrero also designed commercial and industrial buildings, some of which were representative single-family houses and multi-storey residential buildings. Only the entrance of the stadium in Santa Cruz de Tenerife remains today. The "Palacio Insular" - the building of the Cabildo Insular de Tenerife - the Nuestra Señora de Africa market and the Victor cinema shape the appearance of the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The Basilica of Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria in Candelaria was not completed until after his death.

literature

• María Isabel Navarro Segura, Álvaro Ruíz Rodríguez: La arquitectura como escenografía: José Enrique Marrero Regalado (1897–1956) . Colegio de Arquitectos de Canarias, Demarcación de Tenerife-Gomera-Hierro, Santa Cruz de Tenerife 1992, ISBN 978-84-600-8262-0 , p. 336 (Spanish). The book contains an incomplete list of buildings that José Enrique Marrero Regalado collaborated on, that came from his architectural office or that served as models for his work. There is a bibliography for each individual building.
• Sergio Pérez Parrilla: La arquitectura racionalista en Canarias: 1927-1939 . Mancomuidad de Cabildos, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 1977, p. 525 (Spanish).
• María José Ramos Rodríguez et al .: La Basílica de Candelaria - Crónica de una construción . 1st edition. Ayuntamiento de Candelaria, Candelaria 2012, ISBN 978-84-616-1174-4 , pp. 460 (Spanish, the book contains a comprehensive section on the architect).

Web links

Commons : Gallery: Buildings by José Enrique Marrero Regalado  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Juan Carlos Díaz Lorenzo: Los lenguajes: el neo-canario y la arquitectura oficial en Santa Cruz de Tenerife. August 2, 2012, Retrieved July 10, 2013 (Spanish). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ José Enrique Marrero Regalado on guanches.org (Spanish)
2. ↑ María Isabel Navarro Segura, Álvaro Ruíz Rodríguez: La arquitectura como escenografía: José Enrique Marrero Regalado (1897-1956) . Colegio de Arquitectos de Canarias, Demarcación de Tenerife-Gomera-Hierro, Santa Cruz de Tenerife 1992, ISBN 978-84-600-8262-0 , p. 262 (Spanish).
3. ↑ Sergio Pérez Parrilla: La arquitectura racionalista en Canarias: 1927-1939 . Mancomuidad de Cabildos, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 1977, p. 525 (Spanish).
4. ↑ María Isabel Navarro Segura, Álvaro Ruíz Rodríguez: La arquitectura como escenografía: José Enrique Marrero Regalado (1897-1956) . Colegio de Arquitectos de Canarias, Demarcación de Tenerife-Gomera-Hierro, Santa Cruz de Tenerife 1992, ISBN 978-84-600-8262-0 , p. 219 (Spanish).
5. ↑ María Isabel Navarro Segura, Álvaro Ruíz Rodríguez: La arquitectura como escenografía: José Enrique Marrero Regalado (1897-1956) . Colegio de Arquitectos de Canarias, Demarcación de Tenerife-Gomera-Hierro, Santa Cruz de Tenerife 1992, ISBN 978-84-600-8262-0 , p. 336 (Spanish).