Conocimiento e invención. La prueba de examen de Pedro Manuel de Ugartemendía en la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 1803

Abstract

This work wants to address the analysis of the whole architectural academic project process in Spain, through previously unpublished documents. It also aims to be a reference to new approaches that may find in the study and research of the illustrated architectonic project a way for a better understanding of the origin of the contemporary architecture project. So the aim of this work is expositive and also didactic, as the result of a good number of years devoted by the author to the analysis of modern architecture. In this sense the example, provided by the vasque Pedro-Manuel de Ugartemendía, in his entrance exam to the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, allows following the different factors that are involved in the architecture academic exercises, from the idea to its implementation, finding in the whole process a surprising modernity and invention, together to a careful mastery of drawing. In fact, Ugartemendía exercise, in February 1803, on top of being one of the most notables of his time, is a proof of the progress of the third generation of Spanish academic architects towards the proposals circulating in Europe.