Alberto Palacio
Encyclopedia
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
engineer and architect born in Sare
Sare
Sare is a village in the traditional Basque province of Labourd, now a commune in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in south-western France....
(Northern Basque Country
Northern Basque Country
The French Basque Country or Northern Basque Country situated within the western part of the French department of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques constitutes the north-eastern part of the Basque Country....
) and grown up in Bilbao
Bilbao
Bilbao ) is a Spanish municipality, capital of the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country. With a population of 353,187 , it is the largest city of its autonomous community and the tenth largest in Spain...
.
He studied architecture in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
and completed his education in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, studying mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
, astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
and medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
. He was also a student of Gustave Eiffel
Gustave Eiffel
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was a French structural engineer from the École Centrale Paris, an architect, an entrepreneur and a specialist of metallic structures...
.
Works
Between 1890 and 1893, he worked, together with his brother Silvestre de Palacio (engineer), on his most important project, the transporter bridgeTransporter bridge
A transporter bridge is a type of movable bridge that carries a segment of roadway across a river. The gondola is slung from a tall span by wires or a metal frame. The design has been used to cross navigable rivers or other bodies of water, where there is a requirement for ship traffic to be...
("Puente Colgante
Puente Colgante
The Vizcaya Bridge , is a transporter bridge that links the towns of Portugalete and Las Arenas in the Biscay province of Spain, crossing the mouth of the Nervion River....
") on the Nervion
Nervión
The river Nervión runs through the city of Bilbao, Spain into the Cantabrian Sea .It is also known as Estuary of Bilbao on its final tract, from the joining with Ibaizabal river to the sea.-Geography:...
river, between Portugalete
Portugalete
Portugalete is a town lying to the west of Bilbao in the province of Biscay in the Autonomous Community of Basque Country, northern Spain.The town has 51,066 inhabitants and is part of Bilbao's metropolitan area. It is located at the mouth of the Estuary of Bilbao, on the left bank...
and Getxo
Getxo
Getxo is a town located in the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country, in the north of Spain.It is part of the metropolitan area of Bilbao , and has about 83,000 inhabitants...
(Biscay
Biscay
Biscay is a province of Spain and a historical territory of the Basque Country, heir of the ancient Lord of Biscay. Its capital city is Bilbao...
), for which he gained international recognition. It was the first bridge of this kind ever built.
All his work is characterized for the search of the functionality and the innovation, where iron and glass play a noticeable role. He passed long seasons of work in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
where he:
- Participated in the construction of the Palace of Velázquez in the Retiro Park, together with architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, coordinator of the project, and the ceramicist Daniel Zuloaga (1881 and 1883).
- Participated in the construction of the Crystal Palace (inspired by the London oneThe Crystal PalaceThe Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...
) in the same park, again with architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, coordinator of the project, and ceramicist Daniel Zuloaga (1887).
- Designed and built the new Atocha station, in collaboration with the engineer Saint-JamesSaint-JamesSaint-James is a commune in the Manche department in Normandy in north-western France.Saint-James is on the border between Normandy and Brittany.-Heraldry:-Demographics:-World War II:...
(1889-1892).
- Built the OsramOsramOsram, founded 1919, is part of the industry sector of Siemens AG and one of the two leading lighting manufacturers in the world. The name is derived from osmium and Wolfram , as both these elements were commonly used for lighting filaments at the time the company was founded...
factory (1914–1916).