This book revises seven projects that Antonio Fernández Alba submitted to competitions in the 70s which were especially important in the Spanish architectural panorama, such as the Opera and the Palacio de Congresos y Exposiciones in Madrid, the Feria de Muestras (Trade Fair) in Gijón, or Bankunión and Banco de Bilbao buildings, amongst others. Antón Capitel analyses, compares and puts into historic perspective of these seven projects in which Fernández Alba developed some of his most ambitious proposals.
For Capitel, without the figure of Fernández Alba it is impossible to completely understand the evolution of Spanish architecture in the second half of the 20th century. In a few years of busy production the recuperation of rationalist modernity became connected with the organic revision that basically was forged in Spain thanks to Fernández Alba’s work and writings.
None of these seven projects were built, but despite being left in that limbo of paper architectures, or precisely because of it, they showed some intuitions that, if they had materialised, would have taken Fernández Alba's architecture to an even more experimental and daring trajectory, more singular and advanced than it was without a doubt.
