Resumen de Olaguíbel y la arquitectura academicista en Álava
María Larumbe Martín (col.)
The Sociedad Vascongada de Amigos del País was a club that grouped together a cultivated minority and sought to improve living conditions in the Basque Country. In this way it played a key role in introducing and developing enlightened ideas in the provinces of Álava, Vizcaya, and Guipúzcoa. This spirit of enlightenment took root especially in Vitoria, wherethe last third of the 18th century saw the undertaking of majar projects intended to improve the city's infrastructure and make steps forward in hygiene, comfort, and development at large.Waters were channeled, streets were paved and lit, the razing of medieval walls was initiated. Without a doubt, the most praminent of a!! the operations carried out was the construction of a new Plaza Mayor outside the walled old city. This square would serve to connect the medieval quarter to the city's 19th-century enlargement.The author of this work was Justo Antonio de Olaguíbel, an architect born in Vitoria in 1752, into a family that had already far several generations been engaged in construction. Answering the call of family tradition, he entered the architectural world by enrolling in Vitoria's new drawing school, the Escuela de Dibujo, which depended on the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País. Later he moved to Madrid and became part of the Real Academia de Be\las Artes de San Fernando, where he studied and obtained various awards, among them first prize in a 1781 competition for "a sovereign's magnificent palace with gardens''. lt was while he was away in Madrid that the idea of a new Plaza Mayor for his native city was gestated, a grand architectural project promoted by the enlightened minority led by the Marqués de la Alameda, then mayor of Vitoria. A town square in a place known as the Fondón del Mercado -free, undefined land where market fairs and bullfights were held- would make it possible to enlarge the city, which still maintained its medieval scheme and was fenced in by ramparts. Moreover, the municipal institution called the Casa de la Ciudad was housed in a very deteriorated ald building.The new square would provide a public space for a new Casa de la Ciudad to preside. The project was a majar one and it was entrusted to Olaguíbel, the only architect of the city capa ble of interpreting and materializing the idea of the Marques de la Alameda, a fervent advocate of the new academic architecture. O!aguíbel drew a square shape and closed it all around. For future bullfights, each side stretched 220 feet. He organized the facades with total uniformity. The shops on ground level open onto arcades, which in turn open anta the plaza through round arches.Over these are an arder of Doric pilasters and two levels of rectangular windows and iron balconies. The north side, occupied by the Casa Consistorial, the town hall, was made to stand out through its central stretch. Here, at ground level, the arches gave way to a lintel system of pillars preceded by a portica af free-standing Tuscan columns that engage in a sober dialogue with their architrave, frieze, and cornice. Over this is a balcony with stone bal ustrades. The richly molded windows of the two higher levels areframed by vertical bands and everything is crowned with its corresponding pediment. With its rigorous classical language and a design dominated by arder, uniformity,and serenity, the actual plaza space presents an academic spirit of the purest kind, as preached by the architect's teachers in the royal fine arts academy in Madrid. As construction progressed, it became necessary to address the steep slope of the land left between the old city and the new square. Olaguíbel praposed an upper level of dwellings and a plinth over which arcades would open onto the street, the idea being to create a covered street that would connect the historie city to the new city.The design drawn up for this façade (1794) offered two solutions: either a lintel one with Doric columns beneath a horizontal entablature, or semicircular arches framed by pilasters. Known as Los Arquillos because of the arches, this building was erected sorne years later. With that, a difficult urbanistic problem was solved. Olaguíbel also took part in works as vital for Vitoria as the sewer system and the overall paving of streets and squares, far which he drew up plans and conditions (1796). Several times he worked on the city's water system. In 1784 he did the pi ping of the Playa Mayor fountain and later he took charge of the flood-preventive cleaning of the river Za pardiel. He also repaired and cieaned up the channeling of the Berrosteguieta as a solution to its low water level. In religious architecture, Olaguíbel's most important work was the early façade of the church of the Convento de la Magdalena (1783). Here he followed the model of the traditional Spanish convent façade, a rectangle 30 feet wide and 50 feet tall crowned by a triangular pediment, but using a rich, elegant academic language. The orders give it character. The façade is framed by two large pilasters painstakingly designed with a molded base, a smooth shaft, and a magnificent lonic capital adorned with garlands and built of white stone.
