Sert, José Luis

b. 1902, Barcelona; d. 1983, Barcelona

   Architect

   After qualifying in 1928 Sert left Barcelona for Paris to work with Le Corbusier until 1930, an experience which was to leave its mark on his professional career. On returning to Spain he helped to found GATEPAC, an organization of creative artists who wanted to establish in Spain the avant-garde ideas already being developed in Europe by the Bauhaus school in Germany or by Le Corbusier in France. When he came back to Barcelona he became immersed in the intellectual ferment stimulated by the liberal climate of the Second Republic (1931–9), and was resolutely opposed to any return to historic styles. He evolved an idiom which combined elements of Mediterranean tradition, forms of construction rooted in Catalan culture, and avant-garde elements imported from Europe. Among the works of this period are the Dispensari Central Antituberculós (Central Anti-Tuberculosis Dispensary, with Torres i Clave) (1935) and the Casa Bloc (1934–6) which display both a revival of architectural form and a use of new techniques. In 1937, a year after the start of the Civil War, Sert designed and constructed (with Luis Lacasa) the Spanish Republic's Pavilion at the

   International Exhibition in Paris. Exteriors and interiors alternated along the route through the Pavilion where the works of Picasso (Guernica), Julio González, Juan Miró and Calder were displayed. This project was in a sense his artistic manifesto, and he was to take up and develop the architectural themes of the Pavilion in some of his best-known later works.

   After the Civil War he went into exile in the United States, and in 1945 he founded, in New York, Town Planning Associates, a firm which specialized in large urbanization projects in Latin America. He was also one of the most active members of the CIAM (International Congress of Modern Architecture), an organization which had been the inspiration for GATEPAC in Spain. He was appointed President of CIAM from 1947 to 1956, and remained a very committed member until its dissolution in 1959. In 1953 he succeeded Walter Gropius as Dean of the School of Architecture at Harvard, a position he held until his retirement in 1968. He also worked in his own practice in partnership with Jackson and Gourley, and from the late 1950s he was regarded as one of the best architects in the US. He constantly strove in his buildings to harmonize the public and private spheres, and to achieve continuity between exteriors and interiors, often through very sensitive placing of light sources. Among his best known American achievements are the US Embassy in Baghdad (1955–60), Holyoke Center (Harvard, 1958–65) and the Welfare Island Housing Project (New York, 1971). After designing Miro's house-cum-studio la Mallorca (1955), Sert reactivated his links with Europe. Among the prestigious projects that followed, the best-known are the Fondation Maeght (Saint Paul de Vence, 1959–64) and the Miró Foundation (Barcelona, 1972–5). Towards the end of his life he returned to Barcelona, where he was showered with honours and awarded the highest distinctions.

   See also: architects; architecture; Modernism; Noucentisme

   Further reading

   - Freixa, J. (1979) José Luis Sert, Barcelona: Gili.

   - Zevi, B. (1976) Sert's Architecture in the Miró Foundation, Barcelona: Polígrafa.

   MIHAIL MOLDOVEANU