El Pisito 2011

Analyzing residential architecture in Spain today signifies tackling a complex, apparently fragmentary situation, one that makes comment or criticism quite difficult. In the last few years authority over housing and city planning has been transferred to the regions,1 and each has developed its own framework of laws, its own regulations and requirements, and has shaped urban and regional development on the basis of its own criteria. In parallel, schools of architecture have multiplied, reaching many of the zones previously regarded as ?peripheral.? It is easy to understand how the old administrative centrality has given way to a more pluralistic situation closer to the specific problems of each city and region. As a result cultural differences have been accentuated, even compromising the possibility of speaking of an ?architecture Spanish? or reducing it to a mere summation or mosaic of local circumstances. Part of the debate of recent years has been focused on underlining these differences. This essay takes the opposite approach. The premise from which it starts out is that analysis of the phenomenon of ?residential architecture in Spain? makes it possible to acknowledge the survival of a cultural unity that explains the present and the recent past and that does not conflict with the diversity of local experiences.