House for the Heirs of Domingo Machado

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Civil architecture · Year: 1929 · Authors: Antonio Pintor y Ocete

This is one of the last works designed by the architect Antonio Pintor in Santa Cruz, after having served in his role for forty years. While for almost his entire career Pintor developed a style within the purest eclecticism, with this commission at the end of his professional working days, the technician ventured into creating a building with a clear rationalist tendency, a style that from the late 1920s until the Civil War would predominate as an example of modern architecture.

Antonio Pintor designed this house in 1928 for the Heirs of Domingo Machado in an architectural style he himself called "Rational": straight, severe, and balanced lines; quite the opposite of what he had designed throughout his life: undulating lines, heavily decorated façades, opulent buildings with great decorative displays; even in the more modest or those made with a marked functional sense.  

Nevertheless, this building of cubic volume split in half by another taller parallelepiped represents a clear attempt at aesthetic renewal, which the architect himself immediately abandoned.

On the façade, the straight lines timidly play with the openings and the geometric shapes of the railings. Inside, we find spaces designed around a central axis formed by a vestibule and a staircase, with rooms on each side.

 This building serves as an example of the attempt by a technician with a magnificent professional career behind him, who at sixty-six years old, about to retire, sought not to disregard the new currents that were already marking the era.

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