Moneo, Rafael: 1937—: Architect

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Rafael Moneo: 1937—: Architect

Spanish architect Rafael Moneo took one of his field's top honors in 1996 when he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The first Spanish architect ever to win the award, Moneo became part of an esteemed roster of winners that included I. M. Pei, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson. Six years later, Moneo won critical acclaim for the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the home church of Los Angeles's Roman Catholic diocese. Writing in the New Yorker, Paul Goldberger called Moneo "a designer of exceptional thoughtfulness and precision. Even though he almost always works in masonry, his buildings have a certain delicacy."

Moneo was born on May 9, 1937, in Tudela, a city in Navarra, Spain. His father was a structural engineer, but Moneo was originally interested in philosophy and painting before changing course and earning a degree from Madrid University's school of architecture in 1961. His first career post was with the firm of renowned Danish architect Jorn Utzon; at the time, Utzon was completing a commission in Australia for the Sydney Opera House, heralded as one of the world's greatest modern structures upon its completion in 1973, and Moneo worked on-site during the first years of the 16-year project.

Worked on Many Spanish Projects

Moneo had come of age in a Spain that was under the control of a right-wing military dictatorship headed by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Modernism was the style he initially favored, but a fellowship at the Academy of Spain in Rome from 1963 to 1965 awakened his interest in classical styles. In 1965 he finished his doctorate in architecture and opened his own practice in Madrid. His first commission was for a factory in Zaragoza, but over the next decade he gained increasing prominence for several notable structures. The first of these to win international attention was the Bankinter Building in Madrid, which he did with Ramón Bescós. He also taught at Madrid and Barcelona universities, and became known as a deft critic in his field, especially after launching an architectural magazine in 1974 called Arquitectura Bis.

Spain entered a new era in 1975 when Franco died and King Juan Carlos I ascended to the throne. The king quickly steered the country toward a constitutional democracy, along the lines of Great Britain, and Moneo's style fit in perfectly with the new cultural spirit, which merged traditional elements with a progressive verve. Yet Moneo was also gaining an international reputation, and began accepting teaching posts in the United States. In 1985 he moved his family, which included his wife, Belén, and three daughters, to the Boston area when he became chair of Harvard University's department of architecture. In 1991 he became the Josep Lluís Sert Professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, named for an esteemed Barcelona-born architect of the mid-twentieth century who had also taught at the school.

At a Glance . . .

Born Jose Rafael Moneo Vallés on May 9, 1937, in Tudela, Navarra, Spain; son of Rafael (a structural engineer) and Teresa Moneo; married to Belén Feduchi (a contemporary furniture company owner); children: three daughters. Education: Madrid University of Architecture, diploma, 1961, doctorate, 1965; studied at the Academy of Spain, Rome, Italy, c.1963-65. Military Service: Spanish Army, 1958, 1959, 1962.

Career: Worked for the firm of Jorn Utzon, Hellebaeck, Denmark, early 1960s; opened private practice in Madrid, 1965; Madrid University School of Architecture, associate professor, 1966-70, professor of composition, 1980-85; Barcelona University School of Architecture, Barcelona, Spain, professor of architectural theory, 1970-80; Arquitectura Bis, co-founder, 1974; Cooper Union Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies, New York City, visiting fellow, 1976-77; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, visiting fellow, 1982; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, chair, department of architecture, 1985-90, Josep Lluís Sert Professor of the Graduate School of Design, 1991–.

Awards: Premio de Roma, 1962; Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 1993; Manuel de la Dehesa Prize, Spanish Ministry of Public Works/Council of Architectural Associations, 1994, for the most significant public building in Spain, 1983-93; Gold Medal of Architecture, International Union of Architects, and Gold Medal of Architecture, French Academy of Architecture, and the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Hyatt Foundation, all 1996; Royal Gold Medal, Royal Institute of British Architects, 2003.

Address: Office— Cinca 5, Madrid 28002, Spain.

Moneo, however, continued to work in Spain. For some time he commuted to Madrid every weekend to supervise the gutting and renovation of the city's main train station, Atocha. In 1986 work was completed on one of his most outstanding projects, the National Museum of Roman Art in Mérida. The museum covered an excavation of Roman ruins that dated back some two millennia. Mérida had been founded in 25 B.C.E. by Emperor Augustus, and it served as a trade center for the part of the Roman Empire known as Lusitania. There were many Roman edifices in Mérida still functioning, including a bridge and a theater, and Moneo's museum building connected the theater and another monument, a traditional Roman amphitheater, by tunnel to the excavation site, which featured a Paleo-Christian basilica, tombs, and a house. It won him the Spanish government's Manuel de la Dehesa Prize in 1994 for the most significant public building in Spain in a period of ten years. "New walls of Roman brick, laid tightly in a series of arched corridors, create an abstract pattern vaguely suggestive of a binary rhythm, touching history without re-creating it," wrote Los Angeles Magazine critic Greg Goldin of the Mérida museum.

Won Coveted Award and Cathedral Commission

There were other notable commissions for Moneo in Spain during the 1980s and 1990s. He won coveted jobs for the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid and a new Olympic stadium in Barcelona for its hosting of the 1992 Summer Games. He also completed a new terminal for Seville's airport, and the Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation, a small museum on the island of Mallorca. His style found acceptance in less Mediterranean climes as well: he designed a hotel/office complex for the historic Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, and an entirely new building for Stockholm's Moderna Museet, the city's premier collection of modern art.

Such works put Moneo on the short list for the prestigious Pritzker Prize, created by the family of the Hyatt Hotels fortune to address the lack of an architecture category in the Nobel Prize. He won it in 1996, and Moneo's ceremony in California coincided with the announcement that same week that he had beat out several other top architects for what would be only his second building in the United States to date: the Los Angeles cathedral. The original church had been damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and the leader of Los Angeles' Catholic community, Roger Cardinal Mahony, drummed up support as well as $163 million to build a new one. It was a project fraught with controversy from the start over the site itself and cost overruns, but heralded by architecture critics and ordinary Los Angelenos alike upon its completion in 2002.

Moneo's Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels was significant just for the fact that it was a relatively stately, religious-themed building in the center of a major American city—it was said to be the first such structure to go up on such an urban site in more than half a century. It was modernist in flavor, but blended historical elements deftly: Moneo had tons of sand delivered from Spain to mix into the concrete, which gave the exterior a warm, topaz color reminiscent of the first Roman Catholic missions in California. Impressive bronze doors created by artist Robert Graham brought worshippers inside—but into the wrong end, near the altar. A processional walk then wound visitors through. Of the interior, wrote Goldberger in the New Yorker, "Moneo has made a sumptuous modern space, angled and asymmetrical but calming. It is the same adobe color as the exterior, and there is soft, even light from huge alabaster windows. Crisply modern rooms with no right angles are rarely this serene." The alabaster windows were five-eighths of an inch thick, and the critic for Los Angeles Magazine commented favorably upon them as well. "As the sun moves east to west, the veined pigments in the stone change hues, from green and ocher to russet and gold, the way a sinking sun transforms pillars of sandstone in a red rock canyon," Goldin remarked. The church, in downtown Los Angeles, serves a largely Hispanic congregation, and seats 2,600. Outside, a large plaza can hold 5,000 visitors. "I wanted both a public space and something else: what it is that people seek when they go to church," Goldin quoted Moneo as saying in Los Angeles Magazine.

In 2003, the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded Moneo its Gold Medal, another of his profession's top honors. Moneo still maintains his Madrid office. His wife runs a furniture design firm in the city. His eldest daughter, Belén, is also an architect.