Alberto Noguerol has passed away (Callobre 1943, La Coruña 2024). The architect explained that experience is something that is acquired naturally, but that in architecture, as in any artistic discipline, you have to ignore it, be new at every moment, to be able to throw yourself into the void. And always start again, with each project.
Precise, detailed and ingenious architecttrained at the Barcelona School of Architecture (1974) where he taught between 1978 and 1986. In 1980 founded the Noguerol y Díez studio with his partner Pilar Díez (graduate of Fine Arts). Until 2013, he was a professor at ETSAC, where he trained many generations of architects who remember his project courses with particular affection.
Portrait of the Galician architect Alberto Noguerol.
The ensemble of works by the Noguerol y Díez studio expresses a precise materiality and a particular attention to detail, from which the aesthetics of the building derive. This methodical look allows Each project adapts to the landscape and the context by creating a specific atmosphere through lightwhich allows us to understand the space and habitat on which it rests.
From the magnificent cloudy roofs of the Vigo University Library, or the discreet and elegant monumentality of the Santiago Congress Center, to the silent presence of granite as a traditional and abstract identity at the Santiago-Rosalía de Castro Airport.
Among his works located in Barcelona, the Balearic Islands, Murcia and Seville, those designed in Galicia stand out, such as the Town Hall of Cangas (1984), the renovation of the University Club of the University of La Coruña (La Coruña, 1991), the Faculty of Philology (Santiago de Compostela, 1993), The Galicia Congress and Exhibition Center (Santiago de Compostela, 1993), the Central Library of the University of Vigo (Vigo, 1995), the health centers d’Elviña (A Coruña, 1995), Os Mallos (A Coruña, 2002) and Santa Cruz (Oleiros, 2002) and the new terminal of the Santiago-Rosalía de Castro airport (Lavacolla, 2005). Works widely awarded and disseminated in architectural biennials and publications of national and international prestige.
One of the works of the architect Alberto Noguerol
In the documentary A constructed idea (Off Films, Manuel Janeiro) Noguerol and Díez reflected on what happens to architecture over time: “You never know what relationship a building will have with the people who are going to visit it. And we almost prefer not to know. Because in the end, as in life, it is a surprise“.
And one cannot write much about architecture without having experienced the emotions that the space created by the hands of a good architect is capable of creating. Perhaps, as Thelonious Monk said “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”and good architecture, visiting it, observing its details and letting oneself be carried away by the atmosphere of its space, is a sincere story about the thoughts and genius of the architect who knew how to bring it to life from a pencil and paper.
