Chrysler-Seida, Luis Martínez Feduchi: the formation of a modern constructive poetics

Abstract

At the end of the 1920s, Luis Martínez Feduchi received one of his first commissions after obtaining the title of architect, the new shopfront for SEIDA, the exclusive distributor in Spain of the automobile firm Chrysler. Until then, Feduchi’s professional practice has developed within the prevailing historicist current. However, in the process of renewing its image according to the postulates of the new scientific advertising, the American company calls for an appropriate architecture for its sales premises, as part of its global brand communication strategy. In this way, the project for the new facade of its shop in Gran Vía represents for Feduchi a privileged opportunity to practice the new aesthetic principles of architectural modernism. A new practice that implies a new way of building, according to the technical possibilities provided by the industry, that is not only the result of the mere rearrangement of architectural elements, adapted to new materials and construction systems, but also requires the development of a new poetics, capable of providing the symbolism lost after the disappearance of the classical order, as the syntactic and semantic foundation of architecture.