Zuazo Ugalde, Secundino

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Zuazo Ugalde, Secundino (1887–1970). Spanish architect and town-planner. His work was stylistically eclectic, and included several post-offices (e.g. Bilbao, Madrid, and Santander—1924–7), where Viennese influences may be detected, perhaps even more strongly expressed in the Casa de las Flores housing, Madrid (1930–2). A distinguished town-planner, much influenced by his studies of the organization and geometry of El Escorial, near Madrid, he reorganized the inner-city of Bilbao, prepared plans for Greater Seville, and provided designs for the new stretch of the Avenue Castellana, Madrid (opened 1933), on which new Government Ministries were to be erected (1930–7). However, Zuazo's vision of a ‘hymn to the soberness and nobility’ of stone-built architecture was not shared by the architects of the realized buildings which were in a bleak stripped-Classical style reminiscent of the 1930s' official architecture in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. A competent Classicist himself, he designed the Palacio de la Música (1924–6), and the Casa Domingo Ortega (1946–7), both in Madrid, in that style.

Bibliography

Arquitectura, cxlvi (1971);
Florida (1961);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Tafuri & and Dal Co (1986)

A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture