The architect Ángel Fernández Alba, author of the Santiago Castroviejo greenhouse of the RJB-CSIC, dies

The architect Angel Fernandez Albaauthor of the Santiago Castroviejo greenhouse of the RJB-CSIC, He has died at the age of 82as announced by the Royal Botanical Garden-CSIC, which has indicated that the death took place last Thursday, January 29 in Madrid.

“The Royal Botanical Garden conveys its condolences to his wife, the architect and artist Soledad del Pino, and his family. Fernández Alba, artist, landscaper, editor and teacher, carried out numerous architectural projects throughout the country and Scandinavia.“, lamented the RJB-CSIC.

One of the architect’s most emblematic works is the Santiago Castroviejo greenhouse, completed in 1993 as an exhibition greenhouse, and inaugurated that same year by the then Kings of Spain, now emeritus, Juan Carlos and Sofía.

A versatile artist, thinker, editor, landscape painter, teacher, exhibition designer and architect, he obtained his degree in 1970. For the next five years he lived in London, Philadelphia and New York where he completed his training while working. Later, in 1976 he settled permanently in Madrid, where he created his architecture studio.

From this study, projects would come out for different parts of the country such as the Tres Cantos Park, Lavapiés theater, Casa Gand’ara or social housing on the M-30 (Madrid), Colonia de Aviación (Alcalá de Henares), Teatro Nuevo (Ciudad Rodrigo), School of Agricultural Technical Engineering (Palencia), Plaza de San Cristóbal (Salamanca) or the Manacor Hospital (Mallorca).

His projects also reached outside of Spain, specifically in Scandinavia, a land that he loved and knew well, designing the Spanish chancelleries in Stockholm and Helsinki.

Fernández Alba considered that the greenhouse was an “outstanding work”, a uniform glass envelope, arranged against a pre-existing wall, which deviates almost completely from the Iberian-Nordic tradition that until then had permeated his projects.

“Except perhaps in the case of the metal-framed windows that look out onto the gardens and that stand ironically in the continuous glass surface of the wall: openings framed in a wall that has been completely dematerialized,” said Kenneth Frampton, English architect and writer, about this project.