The Pavilion of a Possible Spain: Brussels, 1958 and New York, 1964 in Spain’s Non-Specialist Press

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century, international exhibitions – in any of their forms – becamebrief but significant moments in which architecture was at the center of societal attention.Their ephemeral nature puts the discipline in contact with the direct, immediate disseminationthat characterizes the journalistic medium. It is therefore important to analyze how thisrelationship is articulated. This article studies the treatment in the non-specialist Spanish pressof two events that represented architectural watersheds: the country’s participation in Expo58 in Brussels and the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. The pavilions by José Antonio Corralesand Ramón Vázquez Molezún, in the first case, and Javier Carvajal, in the second, symbolizedSpanish architecture’s commitment to modernity following the civil war and, in a way, reflectedsociety’s process of maturation. The press, acting as a public mirror of the country’s realities,expressed the latter’s interests and concerns. In terms of architecture – whose social repercussionscould not be ignored by the non-specialist press – these pavilions gave form to thatdesire for a “possible Spain”: the term Javier Carvajal used to describe his New York project.