Cristalería Complexes

Industry

Cristalería Española Residential Complexes

Avilés

In the mid-20th century, Cristalería Española established a new production center and two residential complexes for its workers near the mouth of the Avilés river estuary. Both of them were planned differently according to the socio-occupational category of their beneficiaries: managers and engineers on the one hand, and workers on the other hand.

The first of these complexes, Jardín de Cantos, is located in the vicinity of the factory building, on its southern side. It is made up of a series of detached houses for engineers and senior factory staff, including the director's home. The houses, equipped with gardened spaces, have been designed with a flawless urban planning approach inspired by the garden city model by the architect Enrique Rodríguez Bustelo. Between, 1948 and 1964, the architects Manuel Aymerich Amadiós and Tomás Menéndez Abascal, together with Rodríguez Bustelo, were in charge of its design. The complex tries to conjugate the specific needs of the architectural plan with the adaptation to the environment, strictly following the approaches applied by Manuel Aymerich in the Ciudad Residencial Tiempo Libre in Marbella (1956-1961). Concerning the type of the building, a single-family home with an independent plot is adopted in some cases, such as the director's house, but most of the properties consist of two to four dwellings with a garden area.

The planning of the second area, La Maruca, is carried out by the architect Tomás Menéndez Abascal. The construction work took place between 1951 and 1964. It is made up of several blocks of flats, schools, a company shop and a church. The residential blocks follow different occupation models and their planning is based on the number of members that make up the family units (numerous families, families without children, etc.). This affects their surface area, planning, number of rooms and accesses. The church, designed by Manuel Calvete, is an instrument of spiritual and moral control and it is a fundamental part of the complex. 

Natalia Tielve García

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