Indagine formale tra isole reali e ideali. La lezione di Ibiza e dei pueblos spagnoli.

The current globalization phenomena often translate into a decontextualization of the architectural production. The general lack of quality comes from the misunderstanding of places with their natural, traditional, and cultural characters. The Lesson of Ibiza has allowed the rediscovery of the non-urban “Hispanidad” as a result of a physical, geographical, cultural and architectural process, developing a radical revision of national identity through the study of the vernacular architecture and the urban expression of the "pueblo". The architects Fernando Garcia Mercadal (1896-1985) and José Luis Sert (1902-1983) together with the GATCPAC group from Barcelona played a key role in the development of so-called vernacular modernism. Indeed, the Spanish pavilion of the IX Triennale of 1951 had triggered a strong focus on these issues, linking the anonymous "insular" architecture of Ibiza and Mallorca to the contemporary architecture of Coderch and Valls, despite the interest for the Ibizan buildings had already been undertaken by Haussman, Luigi Figini, Gio Ponti and Luigi Moretti. In addition, the movement of "Regeneracionism" by Joaquin Costa aimed at the revaluation of traditional customs and regional landscapes, determining a Spanish "isolation" which accompanies the construction of Franco’s rural cities. In this formal investigation the research about the identity of the popular architecture of Ibiza is transposed into the pueblos: the insular character of the architecture in Ibiza expands into an "archipelago" of cities in a sense of continuity of the architecture language. “Insular” becomes not only a physical condition but also an architectural, formal, mental, and spiritual one in which the permanence and transformation of the architectural language transcends the geographical limit of the island but, at the same time, it defines and delimits its features.