Josep Lluís Sert
Josep Lluís Sert (Barcelona, 1902 – Barcelona, 1983), architect and founding member of GATCPAC (the Group of Catalan Architects and Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture), engaged in modernising Spanish architecture by way of his practical, theoretical and publishing work, applying the principles of rationalism and the Modern Movement. Sert’s growing reputation through his designs and work in the 1930s saw him commissioned to carry out the project for Spanish Pavilion, together with Luis Lacasa, at the Paris International Exhibition of 1937. After the Spanish Civil War, he emigrated to the USA, where, predominantly at Harvard University, he developed his career as an architect and theorist.
Josep Lluís Sert studied at the Barcelona School of Architecture, before working at Le Corbusier’s studio in 1928. Two years later he founded GATCPAC (the Group of Catalan Architects and Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture), which also featured a Basque section and another on central Spain (GATEPAC), and took part in the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM) from 1929, an organisation Sert chaired between 1948 and 1956. Before being entrusted with the Spanish Pavilion, he had executed his most emblematic projects and buildings in Barcelona, melding the premises of rationalism and functionalism with the needs of man and the city’s planning and services. Salient from this first stage is the block of maisonettes on calle Muntaner (1929–1930), the Casa Bloc housing complex (designed with GATCPAC from 1932–1936), the Dispensario Central Antituberculoso (Tuberculosis Clinic, 1934–1938) and the Plan Macià, an urban redevelopment model for Barcelona (1932—1934) which, despite being co-signed with Le Corbusier, was largely cut short.
For the government of the Republic, Sert and Luis Lacasa formulated an eminently modern and anti-monumental pavilion which responded to its role, content and the programme it was to house, as well as its transient nature. Both constructed mechanisms were based on a simple lattice of horizontal and vertical lines with large, free space to display artworks, and, with the exhibition layout in mind, the access and circulation around the building was via interior staircases and outdoor ramps. As a number of photographs testify, Picasso visited the pavilion while it was under construction and became of aware of the space reserved for his work — Guernica was installed on one of the smaller walls on the ground floor, which looked out on to the courtyard.
Unable to work as an architect in Spain once the Civil War was over, in 1941 Sert took up exile in the United States, and that same year he and Paul Lester Wiener founded the Town Planning Associates studio, which was in operation until 1958. His office specialised in urban planning and completed numerous commissions for the US Government, designing urban redevelopment plans for different cities in Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia and Cuba. Furthermore, Sert was the dean of the Harvard University School of Design and Architecture from 1953 to 1969, where he combined his teaching work with architectural theory and practice. In 1955, he set up a new studio, which in 1958 became Sert, Jackson and Associates — as he became partners with Hudson Jackson — and built notable service buildings and housing on the Harvard campus, in addition to private homes in the city of Cambridge. Sert was also a prolific writer, and of his numerous texts worthy of mention is the manifesto Can our Cities Survive? An ABC of Urban Problems, their Analysis, their Solutions (1942). His close friendship with Joan Miró occasioned the house-studio he built in Palma de Mallorca (1955) and the foundation devoted to the artist in Barcelona in 1975. In the time that elapsed between both works, he designed the conceptually related Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (1964)..
