CLAUDE PARENT AT NUEVA FORMA: THE READING OF ARCHITECTURE PRINCIPE IN SPAIN

During the troubled sixties, in countries like France, England or Japan, there was a significant proliferation of teams of architects, sociologists and urban planners that proposed radical architectural visions. Among them, Architecture Principe stood out as the group that had the greater impact in Spain, essentially due to the close relation between one of its founders, Claude Parent, and Juan Daniel Fullaondo, the director of Spanish magazine Nueva Forma. Claude Parent and Paul Virilio's theories about La fonction oblique and Le troisieme ordre Urbain were published in this Madrid-based magazine almost at the same time as in their home country. Nevertheless, the reading of their radical theories diverged from their original propaganda. Fullaondo gave the greatest value to the real possibilities of their architecture, which entailed setting aside the utopian condition of the group and focusing on the pragmatic aspects of their proposals. Adding to this, Fullaondo was particularly interested in publishing Claude Parent's first architectural projects, following previous collaborations with other architects like Andre Bloc or Ionel Schein, whose works were also published in Nueva Forma. This decision meant that Virilio's role was minimized, making the figure of Claude Parent the real protagonist.