Reflejos de unas galeríasarquitectura, óptica y sensibilidad en la Marina de A Coruña

Zusammenfassung

This research deals with the architectural and decorative singularities of a house built in A Coruña in 1872, that still stands out today among those that fit in the maritime façade of the glass-covered galleries of the Marina. The unpublished documentation provided by the descendants of its promoter, the businessman Manuel Ramírez Carvajal, who had made his fortune in the Philippines, completes the existing data in the Municipal Archive of A Coruña, revealing a picture that goes beyond the usual relationships between clients and architects in the context of the development of the bourgeois city. Following Mario Praz’s proposal in La casa della vita, this piece of microhistorical research aims to reintegrate the world of sensations and emotions linked to a house, focusing on the intertwining of architecture with the family life. The tracing of physical and sentimental reflections extends from the public perception of the set of galleries to the intimate metaphors collected in the book of poems Ecos dolientes (1880), prefaced by Emilia Pardo Bazán. The article combines approaches from the history of architecture, visual studies and material culture referring to the spheres of domesticity and gender, enriching these approaches with the author’s own experiences and memories of the space and meanings of the galleries in A Coruña.