Home Work Union Pavilion

The area in which the archaeological intervention has been carried out was part of the grounds of the Campo Fair, held in Madrid between 1950 and 1970 with the aim of showing the country's agricultural and livestock activities, coinciding with the boom in field immigration to the city. After its closure, the buildings of the Campo Fair were destined for different municipal offices, uses that contributed to modifying its original configuration.

The direct antecedent of the Fair of the Field is found in the Fairs of the Association of Cattlemen of the Kingdom held in the first decades of the XNUMXth century, for which a set of facilities were built in the Casa de Campo designed by Juan Moya, among the which featured an exhibition track.

The Casa de Campo became the property of the Madrid City Council in 1931, coinciding with the end of the livestock fairs, leaving its buildings unused.

Starting in 1950, the area began to transform to host the First National Country Fair, integrating part of the old facilities of the Cattlemen's Fair and urbanizing the environment to erase the traces left by the Civil War.

The Field Fair would have a triennial cadence and from the second edition it will become international. To design their buildings, prestigious architects such as Corrales and Vázquez Molezún, authors of the Spanish Pavilion at the Universal Exposition in Brussels, or Francisco de Asís Cabrero, who owes the Hexagon Pavilion and the Glass Pavilion, will be contacted. The latter, in collaboration with Jaime Ruiz, was the author of the Pavilion of the National Institute of Industry (1953), that of the Home Trade Union Work, object of this record, the Pavilion of the Ministry of Housing, that of the Benches or the Palace of Agriculture.

The Pavilion of the Trade Union Work of the Feria del Campo was designed by Francisco de Asís Cabrero and Felipe Pérez Enciso for the third edition of the fair. It was built in 1956 in the vicinity of the Palace of Agriculture. For this, it was necessary to fill in and explain the land, in which there were numerous trenches from the Civil War.

A building was designed with very modern approaches that contrasted with the regionalist style of other surrounding buildings. Its access was resolved through a courtyard decorated with an allegorical ceramic mural of the integration of the countryside and the city, the work of Amadeo Gabino and Manuel Suárez Molezún, which is currently preserved in perfect condition.

Among the particular features of the building, it is worth noting the roof, which allows the central room to be open on the two longest facades. In it a rectangular hole opens that coincides with an interior pond, in the manner of a impluvium Roman, behind which is a fish tank that constitutes the only compartment of the pavilion, with an open floor plan.

From an archaeological point of view, the results have been insignificant, due to the limited size of the earthworks carried out during the rehabilitation work on the building, which has focused on the garden located in front of the main facade, where He has documented the pond glass, which formed a shallow sheet of water. It consisted of two layers of hydraulic cladding and was fed by a channel with the base covered in cement.

The two sheets of water that delimited the floor of the pavilion on the east and west sides have also been documented in order to facilitate its cooling.

During the renovation work on the building, the metal structure of the roof, which constitutes one of the most characteristic elements of the construction, has been observed in its entirety, together with the ceramic mural of Gavino and Suárez Molezún, which will remain integrated into the building after his rehabilitation.

The archaeological study was carried out as a consequence of the comprehensive rehabilitation of the building currently known as the ICONA I Pavilion, which had originally been intended for the Home Work Union Pavilion at the old Campo de Madrid Fair.