The Church of San Agustin in Madrid

Luis Moya Blanco (Madrid, 1904-1990) is a singular figure in the panorama of XNUMXth century Spanish architecture. His education was marked by the influence of his father, a civil engineer, his uncle Juan, an architect and professor at the Madrid School of Architecture, and by his mentor Pedro Muguruza, professor of Projects at the same School, with whom he collaborated during one of each. 

Titled in 1927, he did not show the same enthusiasm for the architecture of the European avant-gardes as other architects of his generation, but he soon became interested in new techniques and materials, specializing in the calculation and execution of reinforced concrete structures. In this area, his participation in the construction of the Capitol building at the service of the Macazaga company is known. In a later phase of his career he turned to the development of brick partitioned vaults, of Catalan influence, a field in which he left important writings. His first years as a professional were devoted preferably to the development of large architectural proposals for competitions. Very well gifted for drawing and with exemplary rigor and working methodology, he acquired a deep knowledge of historical architecture, which allowed him to win the Composition I chair at the Madrid School of Architecture in 1936. 

On the other hand, despite being an architect with traditional training, his theoretical speculations of the years of the Civil War bring him closer to certain aesthetic approaches of Italian art of the time, such as metaphysical painting, and can be considered in that sense as one of the precursors of postmodernity that triumphed in architecture from Italy in the seventies of the twentieth century. 

The change of aesthetic orientation imposed by the winning side of the Civil War towards a type of architecture with roots in national styles, defined in the First National Assembly of Architects held in April 1939, meant for Luis Moya the opportunity to develop his talent and his natural inclinations, being probably one of the professionals who best functioned in the rarefied environment of the autarky years, without this implying a clear political link or position vis-à-vis the new regime. 

He joined the General Directorate of Architecture directed by Pedro Muguruza as an architect, forming part of the Madrid Reconstruction Board under Pedro Bidagor. This allowed him to regularly tackle important projects. With a Catholic background and well connected with some religious congregations, he developed over several decades, in parallel to the official commissions, a good number of projects that, as a reflection on the form and meaning of the religious space, constitute one of the most interesting architectural ensembles. created in those years outside the avant-garde. 

His first religious architecture projects date back to 1935. In 1942, together with Luis Martínez-Feduchi, he designed the parish church of Santo Tomás de Aquino as part of the Museum of America complex, with a Latin cross plan, already using partitioned vaults. That same year he projected the Scholasticate of the Marianist Fathers in Carabanchel, where it included a liturgical space with a central floor plan with a lowered dome, similar to a Greek cross. 

In 1941 he outlined the first project for the parish church of San Agustín in Madrid, which would occupy him for almost fifteen years. It was a basilica-type temple with an exempt tower for a plot not yet adjudicated. In 1946 the City Council and the Reconstruction Board obtained some land located on Joaquín Costa Street, rectangular in shape not excessively elongated and facing north-south, which forced to discard the first project and somehow led to the spatial solution of the definitive one. . Indeed, Luis Moya drew up a new project based on a unitary liturgical space with an elliptical plan, a solution already experienced during the Baroque period in various Madrid churches, as the architect himself noted in his writings. The ellipse had all the advantages of the central plan, but provided a clear spatial orientation towards the main altar. On the other hand, the covering of a large unitary space allowed the architect to experiment with solutions with brick partitioned vaults, which had been the object of his attention. In this second project, the elliptical central space was extended into a deep presbytery and connected tangentially with four circular chapels arranged taking advantage of the space available on the plot, with an aesthetic function and at the same time stabilizing the thrusts of the dome. 

The resulting project was one of the masterpieces of the architect and Spanish architecture of the time, which would serve as a reference for other architects and would have consequences on Luis Moya's projects in successive years. It is powerfully striking that a work so ambitious and of such marked monumentality was, paradoxically, a construction projected under strict principles of economy without any kind of concessions. The central liturgical space was covered with a rasilla vault over a complex of exposed brick ribs that outlined a twenty-pointed star. A beautiful elliptical lantern of clear Michelangelo descent was placed on the dome. The façade was conceived as a large welcoming niche flanked by two stair towers and topped by a complex belfry. If the elliptical spatial solution with radial chapels was related to the baroque tradition represented in temples such as the Monastery of San Bernardo in Alcalá or the church of San Antonio de los Alemanes in Madrid, the formal solution of crossed ribs with a central oculus referred to Islamic architecture and the works of Guarino Guarini, while in other elements the most obvious influence was that of Francesco Borromini. 

One of the characteristics of this project was its development and systematization from a 2,40 m module or grid, both in plan and elevation. The materials and construction systems chosen for the work show the perfect knowledge of traditional construction techniques and the rationality that inspired the entire project process. In a situation of almost absolute lack of steel in the country, Moya was able to reduce its use in this project to the tie bands of the domes and the flat concrete slabs, solving everything else with mass concrete, brick, lime and cement . 

Although the construction began that same year of 1946, the works were paralyzed due to lack of resources in 1947, which gave the architect the necessary time to carry out a series of transformations in the project, which mainly affected the façade, but also the design of the walls, articulating and ranking each part to achieve more clarity and coherence. In 1949, the works were resumed, completing the main body in 1950. The process of maturing and improving the project has been documented in an admirable set of plans and drawings with the different alternatives studied, until reaching the almost definitive solution dated 1951. Even so, the bulrush did not find its final form until 1955. 

The decoration of the interior and the facade-niche was entrusted to various artists of the time, the sculptors Enrique Pérez Comendador and José Espinós Alonso and the painters Santiago Padrós Elías and Juan Esplandiú Peña, who did an impeccable job from the iconographic point of view. 

The church of San Agustín had direct consequences in other projects of Luis Moya, such as the chapel of the Labor University of Gijón (1946-56), the Cathedral project for El Salvador (1953) or the Church of the Virgen Grande de Torrelavega ( 1956-62). 

The building caused admiration in its day, as a materialization of an ideal architectural idea and an update of the classical architectural language. Although the architecture of Luis Moya suffered during the following decades the changes of appreciation derived from the adoption of other architectural approaches more in line with the spirit of modernity, especially from the Second Vatican Council, the growing interest that today arouses is the recognition of a one of the richest and most complex personalities of his time, without whom it would be impossible to understand the Spanish architecture of the mid-twentieth century.