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WORLD DESIGN SPOTLIGHT: The red building
The mark of Enrique Viedma Vidal (Valencia 1889-1959) has been present in the city for more than a century, since he was appointed municipal architect and participated in the creation of such peculiar and interesting buildings as the well-known journalists’ houses beside the Viveros park (developed by the Press Association), the work on the Central Market, which he took over in 1919, and the Red Building (La Finca Roja), to name just a few.
We will focus on this latter building, also known as the beehive-house of the Jesús neighbourhood, which occupies a whole block, trapezoidal in shape and with its four corners chamfered, located in the south of the city’s expansion district.
Its construction was developed directly by the Social Welfare Fund of the Kingdom of Valencia to provide worthy housing for the working classes by building cheap and hygienic homes, which would become the property of their beneficiaries.
The Valencian architect Enrique Viedma designed, between 1929 and 1930, three hundred and seventy-eight residential units, thanks to the existence of a deep buildable area which allowed him to define two different types of property, some of which overlooked the streets and others the large central garden.
Viedma Vidal was highly influenced by the Amsterdam School, also known as the Wendingen Group, from the name of the magazine that acted as a medium to disseminate their interests. They were connected stylistically with the German expressionist architects, with whom they shared the taste for exposed brickwork and an innovative avant-garde design.
The architect built this macro-building with 14 patios, 378 residential properties and 8 towers to store water, all of this in a closed block with internal patios that guaranteed a communal space for socializing.
The influence of the Dutch group on the work of Viedma Vidal is apparent in this building which would represent another level in housing intended for the working classes, with early commodities such as lifts, Venetian blinds and fully equipped bathrooms … Let us not forget that these were the nineteen-thirties.
The architect built this macro-building with 14 patios, 378 residential properties (of different types) and 8 towers to store water, today merely decorative, all of this in a closed block with internal patios that guaranteed a communal space for socializing.
The idea of hygiene, modernity and comfort in the properties, with their necessary cross ventilation, was very present in the building, which used local materials such as red brick, terracotta panels and glazed ceramic for its façades, and progressed towards modernity with a rationalism that, in the difficult post-war period, enabled chickens to be kept in the interior garden that is today a haven of peace in the centre of Valencia.