Armas Marrero House

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Civil architecture · Year: 1933 · Authors: José Blasco Robles

This single-family home was designed in 1932 by the architect José Blasco for the Armas Marrero family. Completed the following year, it was part of a set of three houses that gave great formal unity to the block between Robayna, 25 de julio and Pérez de Rozas streets. Unfortunately, one of these buildings, the middle one, was demolished, losing the aesthetic quality of the entire corner.   

Of fully rationalist character, these buildings, all designed by Blasco, featured expressionist solutions inspired by construction models related to nautical aesthetics: large cantilevered terraces enclosed by tubular railings, as if they were ship decks. 

The Armas Marrero house rises three storeys, the top one recessed, on a regular corner plot. The façade is characterised by the alternation of different volumes traversed by openings arranged regularly. The balconies and semicircular concrete canopies combine with right angles. Notable elements on the façade are the metal railings and the banded walls with horizontal stripes.

Inside, the areas are grouped into large regular surfaces distributed in rooms of equal or compatible uses (vestibule, living room, dining-kitchen, bathrooms, staircase-bedrooms).

This building, recently restored,  together with the nearby one known as "La Casa Estadística", located just around the corner on Robayna street, represent a clear example of the most modern and advanced architecture that was being carried out in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in those 1930s of the last century.

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