Rationalist Route II - 09. ICOT Colony

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Routes · Subcategory: Rationalism route · Year: 1935-1938 · Authors: Miguel Martín-Fernández de la Torre

The ICOT colony is one of the most interesting sociological and urban experiments carried out in the Canary Islands.

In the mid-1930s, the architect Miguel Martín Fernández de la Torre, together with his brother Rafael and his brother-in-law, the engineer Ernesto Durán, created the construction company Industria y Construcción Oficina Técnica (I.C.O.T.). This company was the promoter of this group of houses that bears its name.

This work is of capital importance in Miguel Martín's career. It is a group of thirty-five houses intended for low-income families, in which the architect carried out his ideas of rationalist typology under one of the precepts of the Modern Movement; the standardisation of construction methods as a response to the social housing problem.

This group of houses, which is organised around the cul-de-sac extension of Pereda Street, is considered the key work of Ciudad Jardín, where Martín, as promoter and urban planner, wanted to mix social classes in the same area which, at that time, was being occupied exclusively by the bourgeoisie of the capital of Gran Canaria.

The economical houses formed three rows of two-storey houses (none exceeding 78 square metres per floor), semi-detached or paired and with backyards. The urbanisation conformed to the formal guidelines of the new architecture: flat roofs, smooth façades, a moderate size of three or four bedrooms per house and the excellent idea of including gardens in them to share urban life with nature.

The internal spaces respond to a moderate modernity, adapted to conventional domestic uses; simplicity and volumetric boldness in the forms and, above all, functionality in the designed whole. It is interesting to highlight that designs made by the architect himself are preserved, showing everything from handles and knobs for doors and windows to furniture and interior details.

The ICOT colony, developed over nearly five years (1935-1938), reached a quality that had nothing to envy from other social and urban experiments being carried out in those years in the main European cities.

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