"It is a systematised division and arrangement of space into the infinitely large and the infinitely small. As possible applications of this volume, an obvious one could be: a wonderful toy".
Rafael Leoz
What is the ‘Módulo Hele’?
The ‘Módulo Hele’ is the first step in Leoz’s great contribution to architecture.
It is based on an extremely simple module that offers the maximum possible combinations in terms of height and surface, facilitating serial production.
Three aligned cubes plus an adjacent one at one end which, when joined with others of the same type, form groups of varying complexity or simplicity.
Only 16 modules are needed to form a cube.
With just a few elements, an infinite number of harmonic solutions can be created. The combination of two L modules alone allows for 123 possible combinations and three for more than 12,000!
Although the name ‘Hele’ is an abbreviation of the surnames Hervás and Leoz, it was Joaquín Ruiz Hervás himself who, in a letter to the magazine Arquitectura, made it clear that the module was the exclusive work of Leoz, despite the fact that he was often credited with co-ownership: “the study on the ‘Hele’ (…), both in the origination of the idea and in its subsequent development, is due exclusively to my colleague Rafael Leoz de la Fuente”.
Hervás and Leoz had studied together and continued working together after graduating along with two other colleagues – José Luis Iñiguez de Onzoño and Antonio Vázquez de Castro – under the name of ‘Grupo 122’. Although 1956 was a prolific time for the four architects, who were awarded prizes in several competitions, different factors and circumstances led the group to take on projects separately and, later, to their separation. For a time, before the dissolution of the team, they worked in pairs taking on projects separately. It was during those years of working with Hervás that Leoz gave shape to the first version of his geometric-modular theory through the aforementioned ‘Módulo Hele’, which he would present publicly on his own with the implicit acknowledgement, in the name, of his partner.
Rafael Leoz's stained glass work composed of glass ‘heles’.
If one had to assign an official birth date to the ‘Módulo Hele’, it would have to be 1960. It was in March of that year that the magazine Arquitectura published the first article about his discovery and a few months later, at a meeting of architects in the city of San Sebastián, Leoz showed Coderch his drawings and photos of his research. From that conversation came Coderch’s proposal to put him in contact with Prouvé. They met that same year. A year later Leoz received his first international recognition at the 1961 Sao Paulo Biennial, where his theories were awarded a special distinction by the jury. The following year Leoz and Le Corbusier met. Because of all these events, and beyond what the ‘Módulo Hele’ means in the totality of Leoz’s work, there is no doubt that its importance is even greater for having been the trigger for a series of events that marked Rafael Leoz’s professional career.
It is curious that something so simple in appearance should be so great, that something so simple on the surface should mean so much, it was an element of the utmost simplicity that appeared intuitively. And just as a module was to be the beginning of a repetition, the ‘Módulo Hele’ was the first step in Leoz’s great contribution to architecture.
But why the ‘Módulo Hele’, why a prism with an L-shaped base made up of four equal squares? Rafael Leoz explained that: “the right angle makes sense as long as the force of gravity exists, the most economical and statically best working spatial structures are grid structures with vertical supports, and if the grid in the horizontal plane is orthogonal or a grid, all the better”.
The combination of two Ls with each other allows 123 different shapes. In addition, the Ls offered an extraordinary connection to a key issue in terms of proportion: the Fibonacci sequence. Not only that, but many good projects responded, without knowing it, to the ‘Módulo Hele’.
Not only are the combinatory possibilities infinite despite working with a relatively simple module on a grid, but by varying the 90° angle by others of 60° and 120°, new design opportunities were introduced, which increased even more if the set was deformed, stretching or contracting the module.
Leoz, when asked by the art critic José de Castro Arines for the newspaper Informaciones what was “the true origin of his invention”, answered unmovingly: “Prefabrication. In the prefabrication of my ‘Hele’ there is only one length of beams and slabs. Do you realise what it means in architecture to handle only one type of floor pillar, when the number of floors in the building as a whole is the same? “
These discoveries led to the suspicion that a new system of work had to be accepted by architecture, replacing the one it had historically assumed as its own and which confined it to the world of art, of creation, and which turned architects into artists and almost geniuses. Putting this at risk was not a trivial matter. For this reason, Leoz had to endorse the usefulness of the ‘Módulo Hele’ in order to demonstrate its viability, which meant managing to industrialise architectural elements. Although there were clear defenders and admirers of Leoz’s theories, there were more than a few who considered that Leoz’s model made architectural creation rigid, limited it and constrained its artistic side. Leoz continued his research to demonstrate not only the usefulness of his theories but also that, far from distancing architecture from art, mathematics endorsed the artistic beauty of the creations born of his method.
In the face of criticism from those who did not want to lose their hegemony, arguing that Leoz’s system was limiting, international opinion bowed at the feet of the ‘Módulo Hele’. Mies van der Rohe referred to it as ‘Mr. Leoz’s new module’ and went on to describe Spanish architecture as ‘the most honourable, balanced and sincere’ of that time.
The sum of the praise and successes achieved probably gave Leoz the strength he needed to continue his research and, far from considering his work a success, he did not give up on it.
And, far from solving the enigma, Leoz included the triangle as a consequence of the alteration of the angles of the vertices. To the flat square and the cube he added a group of triangles, arguing that four right triangles form a parallelogram and four parallelograms grouped in an L contain 16 right triangles.
In an article, Leoz will say that “it is a systematised division and arrangement of space into the infinitely large and the infinitely small. As possible applications of this volume, an obvious one could be: a wonderful toy”.
“My work is an opening to a very limited and modest path, which can be one of the usable paths (...) What I do ask for is your collaboration, because I really need criticism, precisely the criticism from my colleagues, well-intentioned; for them to really tell me if I am going astray, since, practically, it is here in Madrid and in Spain, where this is unknown. The first very elementary things are known (...) and nothing more, later a much more complete theory has been reached, but always emphasising that its aspirations are very limited, trying to solve a problem of standardisation of Architecture and that, if it has any virtue, it is precisely that of comprising virtually the entire field of construction.”
Rafael Leoz
