Abstract
A stroll around the University of Alicante campus is like a journey through the history of Spanish architecture of the last 40 years, as many of its buildings exemplify the best production of the period. This legacy also tells a story about the role played by female architects within the profession. In fact, a gender reading reveals that only two women, Pilar Vázquez Carrasco, the architect of the Faculty of Sciences (FS, 1982) and the Social Club I (1987), and Dolores Alonso Vera, responsible for the Higher Polytechnic School IV (HPS, 1999), have designed structures on the campus over almost four decades and out of a total of more than 50 buildings. The FS is an example of structural sincerity whose brick and concrete materials and externalisation of services provide Brutalist echoes. The HPS IV is a design exercise consisting of a series of elegant, inviting volumes and open spaces intertwined with the campus garden. This essay focuses on the comparative analysis of these two award-winning works to unveil those contributions that female authorship has brought to their solutions by relating them to comparable buildings in space, time and type, but designed by male architects.
Highlights
The history and development of the University of Alicante (UA) campus gives insight into the role of female architects with regard to professional practice in Spain during the last two decades of the 20th century
This paper explores two significant buildings of the University of Alicante that were conceived by female architects
In the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (FVM), collective spaces are practically missing, being reduced to the strict programmatic requirements of common areas, which far from being places to stay are treated as mere passageways and vertical communications
Summary
The history and development of the University of Alicante (UA) campus gives insight into the role of female architects with regard to professional practice in Spain during the last two decades of the 20th century. In this respect, a gender perspective reveals that only two women, Pilar Vázquez Carrasco and Dolores (Lola) Alonso Vera, designed teaching facilities on this campus. In 1975, she set practice in Alicante, where she had to move due to her husband’s, architect Miguel Dolç Rincón, career, completing her studies through distance learning They both lived and worked in Alicante up until 1998, when they returned to Madrid. Vázquez Carrasco’s Educational, Research, Culture, and Sports Regional Ministry building in Alicante is one of her most significant works
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