Towards a pragmatic architecture. The case of Tous & Fargas

Abstract

Tous & Fargas were a unique case in the field of Spanish architecture of the second half of the 20th century. From the technical and industrial experimentation of their first works, they developed a nonconformist architecture within the realistic conditions characteristic of the time, propitiated by the economic, political and social context. Despite of this, they achieved a remarkable success carrying out designs of technological type and giving support to the industrial innovation of constructive systems. However, during the last stage of their collaboration, traits characteristic of the pragmatic drift are visible to which much of the architecture of the last quarter of the 20th century was subjected. The excess of mercantile concern for the real estate product, the excessive systematization of the typological models and the constructive systems, the lack of a consistent theoretical discourse or the abandonment of the technical investigation as a priority of innovation are some of the symptoms that characterize the pragmatic architecture of their latest works.