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 – became
brief 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 dissemination
that characterizes the journalistic medium. It is therefore important to analyze how this
relationship is articulated. This article studies the treatment in the non-specialist Spanish press
of two events that represented architectural watersheds: the country’s participation in Expo
58 in Brussels and the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. The pavilions by José Antonio Corrales
and Ramón Vázquez Molezún, in the first case, and Javier Carvajal, in the second, symbolized
Spanish architecture’s commitment to modernity following the civil war and, in a way, reflected
society’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 repercussions
could not be ignored by the non-specialist press – these pavilions gave form to that
desire for a “possible Spain”: the term Javier Carvajal used to describe his New York project.