This thesis explores the life and works of the Catalan architect Xavier
Busquets Sindreu (1917-1990), focusing on his earlier professional
stages, the exceptional training he acquired in São Paulo between 1951
and 1955, and how he adapted this knowledge to the Catalan reality of
the time when he returned to Barcelona.
The research has been mainly based on the study of the documentary
collection kept by the Historical Archive of the Chamber of Architects
of Catalonia, a valuable material containing many of the works built by
Busquets. The complex reality of São Paulo during the 1950s has been
approached through secondary sources. In order to contextualize other
aspects of his biography, we have also researched in other institutions,
such as the Barcelona School of Architecture, the Royal Catalan Academy
of Fine Arts of Sant Jordi, the Monastery of Montserrat and the
Ministry of the Army. As Busquets had no direct descendants and his most
personal documentation was destroyed, we finally have sought the
testimony of people who knew him professionally or were part of his
family circle.
As a first son of the well-known architect Guillem Busquets Vautravers
and Maria Sindreu i Oliva, members of the Barcelona bourgeoisie at the
beginning of the twentieth century, young Busquets grew up in a
Germanophile family environment characterized by language proficiency
and intellectual and artistic inquisitiveness. But his academic career
lacked perseverance and was interrupted on several occasions by a
controversial participation in the Spanish Civil War and World War II.
After the war, and already a qualified architect, Busquets arrived in
Brazil, where he came to work with two renowned international
professionals in architecture: the Polish Lucjan Korngold and the German
Adolf Franz Heep, both coming from a solid branch of the European
architectural modernity as disciples of undisputed masters such as Adolf
Meyer or Le Corbusier.
After experiencing the throbbing momentum of São Paulo and participating
in projects such as the Lausanne, Lucerne and Araraúnas buildings,
Busquets had to reconsider the lessons of this training when returning
to Catalonia, modulating this exceptional basis and starting a process
of adaptation and consolidation in search of a professional practice of
his own. This would lead to significant works, such as the Bellvitge
housing estate, the residential units on Escoles Pies, Dalmases or
Carulla streets in Barcelona and a series of corporate buildings such as
the seat of the Chamber of Architects of Catalonia in Plaça Nova or the
company headquarters for Caixa d’Estalvis i Mont de Pietat and Mutua
General de Seguros on Diagonal Avenue, Sandoz on Gran Via de les Corts
Catalanes, the Société Générale de Banque in Plaça Catalunya, or Hispano
Olivetti in Madrid.
These works came along with other remarkable events, such as Busquets’
involvement in one of the first meetings of Team X, the III
Hispano-American Biennial of Art and the founding of the early Museum of
Contemporary Art in Barcelona, alongside his collection of pieces of
art, designed to bedeck the unique spaces of his home.
A man of the world and cultured architect, always attentive to
international current affairs, Busquets practiced a sometimes hybrid and
heterodox architecture that raises issues such as the modernization of
the architectural office, the role of arts in architecture, the legacy
of European rationalism, the efforts to rationalize and industrialize
construction or the technological references to the American-shifted
International Style, among others. Therefore, Busquets has not always
been easy to fit into the local narrative of modern Catalan architecture
during the second half of the twentieth century. But for these and
other reasons that the thesis tries to show, we advocate that Busquets’
work, which was extensive and profound, may be of an interest greater
than what it may have risen so far.