Issue date: 26 Apr, 2007
Six new stamps are issued in this year’s Architecture series depicting outstanding buildings such as the chapel of Valleacerón in Almadenejos (Ciudad Real), the house called El Capricho in Comillas (Cantabria), the market of Santa Caterina (Barcelona), the bridge of Bizkaia in Las Arenas – Portugalete (Vizcaya), the T4 Terminal of Madrid’s Barajas Airport and the palace known as Casa Lis (Salamanca). The Valleacerón chapel, built in the year 2000, is the work of architects Sol Madridejos and Carlos Sancho Osinaga. It is one of the most innovative projects of the last decade with its multiple triangular planes in origami-like folds rendered in concrete. It is set on a hill top and has a surface area of 80 square metres in which matter, space, surroundings, light and landscape match perfectly.
El Capricho, conceived as a summer house, is the work of a young Antoni Gaudí built between 1883-85 under the supervision of architect Cristobal Cascante Colom. It is of an eclectic style with modernist influences and a mixture of Neo-Mudejar and Neo-Gothic motifs. Its façade is made of concrete decorated with strips of ceramic. Stand out the columns at the entrance which hold an original tower.
The Santa Caterina market, inaugurated in 1848, has been refurbished by architects Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue. Its most outstanding element is the undulated roof top made out of colourful ceramic pieces resembling a big mosaic similar to other modernist buildings in Barcelona.
The Bizkaia bridge is a striking civil work inaugurated in 1893. Its author was engineer Alberto de Palacio, disciple of Eiffel. It was the first bridge in the world with a transporter suspended above the river. It is an exponent of the iron Architecture and is still in use.
Terminal T4 of the Barajas airport in Madrid, is the project of architects Antonio Lamela and Richard Rogers, and was inaugurated in 2006. It has a main building and a smaller one beside it. Its structure is made of glass and steel and the roof tops of bamboo. The interior has plenty of light and space and it is practical, flexible and functional.
The Casa Lis was initially built as a private palace in 1905 by Joaquín Vargas and is currently the Art Nouveau and Art Decó Museum. The building has a modernist orientation and holds the collections of antique –dealer Ramos Andrade.
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