In the antiseptic editorial scene of the Sixties in Spain, the art and architecture magazine Nueva Forma – ran by Juan Daniel Fullaondo and published in Madrid between 1966 and 1975 - had a leading role in the renewal of the Spanish architectural culture. Fullaondo's own critical essays aimed at interacting with the very historical course, with the firm belief that criticism itself bears such a real role in the history of architecture as buildings themselves.
The four 'glances' that the research presents dig into cultural issues of this period concerning architecture's historiography, theoretical eclecticism, the evolution of architectural criticism, and the inevitable propagandistic side that every publication bears. Adding to those, a previous study presents, chronologically organized, a series of relevant issues dealing with the magazine's founding, format, structure, protagonists, particularities, and influences, both in a national and international context.
The first chapter analyses the way in which the past of Spanish architecture - architecture from the 1920s and 1930s - was being organized. Fullaondo displayed a determined 'non-conformist look' towards previous historical writing, making him question the excessively orthodox, disciplinary approaches to architecture. Thus, he claimed for a specific place for Basque-Navarre culture within the modern history of Spanish architecture ¾opposing the prevalent Castellano-Catalan bi-focal development traced by other authors, such as Oriol Bohigas and Carlos Flores¾, consequently rejecting those historical constructions built on a partial selection of works belonging in a specific architectural language, namely rationalism.
The second chapter discusses how organic architecture, based on Bruno Zevi’s ideals, took in his hands a new direction, consciously designed to provide theoretical support to an architectural body mainly consisting of drawn, and only occasionally built, architectures. The existence of an "organic decade" of Spanish architecture during the 1960s illustrates the effect of this "operative glance", ubiquitous in Fullaondo's criticism. His approach to architectural works, drawings, or historical figures showed an erudition interested in the formal and compositional side of architecture, in a period where other authors found in the technological, social or methodological aspects all the basis they needed to develop their work.
After this, a third chapter shows the ‘kaleidoscopic glance' Fullaondo displayed on the work and thought of sculptor Jorge Oteiza. Fullaondo found in Oteiza a master figure, a fatherhood for the consciously accepted orphan condition of Spanish architecture. His situation as Basque exile, his side as an introspective artist, his interdisciplinary works, or his international impact reflected a personality, and a professional career that combined aspects and desires which can be found in Fullaondo's criticism. Oteiza was subject to different discussions that allow us to penetrate into the evolution of Fullaondo's own reflective activity. His critic evolved from a university critique to a critique of interpretation.
Finally, a fourth glance analyzes the relationship between Nueva Forma and the international scene. The French scene was the context where Fullaondo found shared ideals, mainly through Claude Parent's experimental work. The ‘crossed glance’ between the French and the Spanish contexts allowed Fullaondo to write in L’architecture d’aujourd’hui, introducing the public eye to a whole new generation of young, belligerent and innovative Spanish architects whose work was directly connected with -and comparable to- contemporary international trends, thus confirming the rapid development of Spanish architecture, which had already got rid of the bi-focal, limited local tradition portrayed some years before by foreign architectural magazines such as Zodiac or Werk.
Juan Daniel Fullaondo took on a historical commitment by recovering the trajectory of a group of architects and artists who could have been consigned to oblivion; he created a historical project providing theoretical support to unbuilt works which would otherwise have been lost; he promoted nationally underrated architectures in the foreign media, setting them in the complex scene of the time; he firmly placed a creator like Oteiza, whose work and thought is to this day an unquestionable term of reference within the world of Spanish architecture, at the forefront of Spanish architectural culture. He achieved all this with a personal analytical development that bore witness to his understanding of architecture from form – always understood as an unavoidable tool of the creator to configure space – and displayed a view that permanently questioned what was said, capable of inciting readers towards permanent reflection.