25 Catalan studies of architecture (and one designer) for the world to come

BarcelonaThe thirty or so Catalan practices participating in the UIA architects' congress, most as speakers, others as moderators, reveal the character of the new generations: rooted and at the same time with international ambition. Many of these architects entered the market in the midst of a crisis and had to diversify to get by. And all are more aware than ever of the sector's major social and environmental challenges. "The selection of practices is not a matter of people, but of contexts. There are certain practices that are at a professional moment of introducing new parameters that have marked a turning point," states Albert Bajet, the congress's curator along with Maria Giramé, Carmen Torres, Pau Sarquella, Tomeu Ramis, and Mariona Benedito. "While forty years ago we spoke of the autonomy of architecture and its undeniable capacity to transform spaces and the city, the practices represented at the congress, both Catalan and international, make us realize that there is a great diversity of phenomena and disciplines that interact with space." Previous generations, those of the architects who built Olympic Barcelona, are also represented at the congress, but on routes organized by the congress itself. "There is no tabula rasa, but rather the younger ones collect, with more or less significant transformations, built, geological, cultural legacies...", says Bajet.

Nevertheless, Bajet recalls that today's great challenges are not new, as discourses on ecology and demands to reduce dependence on fossil fuels date back to the seventies. At that time, they were minority discourses, and now they are at the center of architectural debate. "We have not forgotten formal issues, but we have integrated elements of passive architecture, vernacular, and resources to regulate air flows, thermal inertia, and temperature stratification. Climate-related issues have become central," he says.

One of the factors that has favored the change in mentality is education. "Up to the generation that is up to 40 years old, let's say, we all received academic training in which modernity was praised. Modern architecture understood as the work of four or five geniuses," explains architect and curator Olga Subirós, host of one of the congress talks. "The majority of 20th-century architecture is what has contributed enormously to climate change. It is now that we are beginning to have the awareness that 38% of carbon dioxide emissions correspond to construction, but this happens that, even though some ecologists in the seventies mobilized, ecological awareness in the construction sector is very recent," assures Subirós. On the other hand, the architect points out two figures who have contributed to the sector catching up in environmental terms: Albert Cuchi, professor at the School of Architecture of Vallès (Etsav) specialized in architectural sustainability, and Greta Tresserra, head of the decarbonization conferences organized by the College of Architects of Catalonia (COAC).

The impact of the 2008 crisis

The architects who are now in quarantine were among the most affected by the 2008 crisis. "The crisis was the catalyst for this change in context, clearly," says Bajet. "In the climate of prosperity in the years leading up to the bursting of the real estate bubble, it was difficult to be critical, not only in the field of architecture, but globally. So the crisis generated a certain awareness about economic limits, but also about the planet's limitations in terms of natural resources or climatically," explains Bajet. "Awareness of global warming and its impact on sea-level rise began to become central from then on. And when architects were able to work again, they found that all these concerns have led to incorporating a layer of complexity into projects. We are not only talking about climate issues and energy efficiency, but also about the social aspect, experimentation with new typologies, new public spaces," assures Bajet.

"In addition to the 2008 crisis, I would also talk about the impact of 15-M, Occupy Wall Street, and some of the discussions around the city, city governance, and discourses on growth and the drive to sustain oneself. In our case, we don't have a problem: we don't want the business to be upward and to grow bigger and bigger, but to sustain ourselves, to have work and to be able to work very intensely," states the architect, curator, and researcher Lluís Alexandre Casanovas, who participated in the congress in a round table on Intertwined Landscapes: Culture, Food, and Climate Ecologies. "One of the things that happened here is that the context forced many people to look for alternatives, to work in other areas: there are many curators and a lot of research, and many people discovered other models when they went abroad. All of this has made us, I don't know if multidisciplinary, but it has given us a more critical view of the discipline," says Casanovas. "We are a generation that has been forced to undertake projects with very little money, to seek opportunities in areas that were not traditional. We do much more architecture for the middle class than was done before."

Another of the congress's lines that Bajet highlights is the weight of architects from the Global South. "Although there are general ideas and global principles, it is very important to see the situated examples of each case and how certain things occur in a specific context, with specific trades and in a specific natural environment".

These are 25 Catalan architecture studios, and one design studio, participating in the UIA architects' congress.

Mariona Benedito (curator)

One of the most popular FAD architecture awards in recent years is for the block of 79 public housing units that Mariona Benedito built with Martí Sanz in Sant Boi de Llobregat. The sector and the general public praised the central gallery at a time when the covid pandemic had reminded us of the importance of having a balcony to go out on during confinement. Since then, Benedito has continued working alone on new forms of collective housing.

Tomeu Ramis (Flexo Arquitectura) (curator)

Tomeu Ramis is the co-founder of the Flexo studio together with Aixa del Rey. They have won the latest FAD architecture prize together with Arnau Sastre, from the Addenda studio, for the programmatic and structural reorganization of an important part of the built heritage of the Eixample block where the market, the library and the Sagrada Família civic center are located. Of their work, they say that they maintain the focus "on the local cultural context" and that each work articulates specific stories of the place, the program, and the users through spatial, structural, and material decisions".

Pau Bajet and Maria Giramé (curators)

The crisis did not paralyze Pau Bajet and Maria Giramé, who decided to move to London for a few years, where they worked for David Chipperfield. Upon returning to Barcelona, they founded their studio. "Our work aims to reveal new and ambiguous relationships between infrastructure and appropriation, concreteness and uncertainty, vernacular and digital, ecology and poetics, uselessness and politics," they say about their work. They won the FAD award for the rehabilitation of the Alfacs campsite, together with the JAAS studio. A notable feature of this intervention is the use of compacted earth, with the aim of connecting the building with the landscape.

Pau Sarquella and Carmen Torres (curators)

The joint professional practice of Carmen Torres and Pau Sarquella began as professors in the INDA (International Program in Design and Architecture) at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. "We always start with exhaustive contextual research and a reflection on what is asked, almost as if it were an equation. We tend to question everything so that we can then take it very seriously. In our projects, there is almost always a desire to engage with social and collective memory, as well as with the physical or theoretical context itself," say Sarquella Torres about their work. Two small schools mark the beginning and the present of the studio: one in Thailand and the most recent one in Banyoles, created with Marc Riera, the result of the renovation of a property acquired in 1926 by the Cultural Institution Magdalena Aulina, which had various uses over time. On the other hand, Sarquella is the co-author of Persiana Barcelona, a redesign of the traditional rope blind that has been a success.

Eva Franch and José Luis de Vicente (FAST)

Separately or as a pair on the FAST platform, architect Eva Franch and cultural researcher and curator José Luis de Vicente, former director of the Design Museum, have become two of the most recognized voices in debates about "the intersection between architecture, environmental imaginaries, and civic technologies", as they themselves say. Before creating FAST, they worked together at the Model architecture festival in Barcelona. Currently, Franch works as a professor at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, and De Vicente works at centers such as IAAC and Columbia University. In some interviews, Franch has claimed that architects must work for a "unique client": the ecological and climatic scale of the planet.

Thanks

TAKK is an architecture and research studio led by Mireia Luzárraga and Alejandro Muiño. They have offices in Barcelona and New York, where Luzárraga is director of Studio I at Columbia University GSAPP. They designed the Catalan pavilion for the last Venice Architecture Biennale, Water parliaments, six hands with Eva Franch. The work of Mireia Luzárraga and Alejandro Muiño is characterized by their critical and experimental pursuit of traditional architectural codes, through feminism and ecology. They often work with low-cost or recycled materials, with which they create everything from housing to utopian machines.

Flores Prats

Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats have achieved international recognition with their personal vision of intervening in built heritage, which they call "emotional heritage," the prime example of which is the Sala Beckett in Poblenou. Flores and Prats work with the aim of preserving traces of all the lives of a building, which does not necessarily have to have great architectural value. Currently, they have a major exhibition on display at the Centre Arc en Rêve in Bordeaux and are working on the rehabilitation of another theater, the Variétés, in Brussels, and the recovery of the Favorita warehouse in Poblenou. "When we get involved in heritage issues, it shocks us and we find it hard to understand that a partial reading of buildings is made," Flores said in an interview with ARA. "The main facade of the Variétés theater is protected, but the other one seems to have no value, and we are interested in seeing how the contrast between the two works. At La Favorita, of two equal parts of a fence, one is protected and the other is not. It is essential to treat buildings with continuity, treating the old and the new at the same time," he explained.

Harquitectes

Roger Tudó, Xavier Ros, David Lorente and Josep Ricart are the architects of the moment in Catalonia. They have six major public projects in hand, the fruit of ten years of work: the extensions of Macba and MNAC, the rehabilitation of the Arnau Theatre, the transformation of the old Cannon Foundry into a digital arts center, a civic center in Nou Barris, and the rehabilitation of La Bòbila Carmen in La Teixonera as a space for entities. Harquitectes are known for their innovative drive in materials and typologies and for their environmental awareness. And for how they want to introduce the factor of time into their works. "A pre-existence already carries a stored amount of time that makes it easier for the building to have character —affirms Roger Tudó—. We also try to achieve this even if the building is newly built. We strive for the building to be like embedded time, to be the time of the construction process because, in a way, it connects you with something historical. Our works are often new and seem to have been in that place for twenty or fifty years."

Carles Oliver

The Majorcan architect Carles Oliver (Felanitx, 1979) says of himself that he is an architect from Etsab and a "master builder out of professional necessity". Since 2009, together with his colleagues, he has developed a string of works that, in the midst of the climate emergency, has become a benchmark for environmental sustainability nationally and internationally. Oliver won the FAD 2018 award and the LIFE 2021 award for best environmental project from the European Commission for a block of fourteen protected homes in Sant Ferran de Formentera, where he used posidonia as an insulating material.

Aldayjover

Deepening the coexistence between cities and their rivers is one of the distinctive features of the studio founded by Iñaki Alday and Margarita Jover, currently with two more partners, Francisco Mesonero and Jesús Arcos. Currently, they are working on the project for the Tres Xemeneies park. As a professor at the University of Virginia, Alday led a project to decontaminate the Yamuna River in New Delhi. “Rivers have always been the backyard of cities, we have always used them as resources and at the same time protected ourselves from them,” Alday explained with regret when he presented the project in Barcelona in 2018.

Carles Enrich

Known for the environmental restoration of the Rec Comtal, Carles Enric a few weeks ago won one of the most outstanding awards of the annual awards of the Superior Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain for Can Saltiri, which is the recovery of Rupit Castle. The project aims to improve access to the castle from the urban center and condition the routes between the existing remains. These two projects reflect Enric's talent for working with pre-existing structures and developing cross-cutting work with the landscape.

Curro Claret

The only professional on the list who is not an architect. Curro Claret is an industrial designer, known for his vision of design as a tool for social transformation. He has collaborated with the Arrels Foundation and has conducted workshops with design students to create objects using materials recovered from the DANA. In the field of architecture, he is known for his collaborations with the Flores Prats studio. On several occasions, Claret has urged the architecture sector to open up to collaboration with other disciplines so that projects can have a real impact.

Pere Joan Ravetllat / Rearq-UPC

Pere Joan Ravetllat and his colleagues from the research group Architectural Rehabilitation and Restoration at the UPC participated in the last Venice Architecture Biennale with various prototypes for sustainably regenerating housing, specifically in Ciutat Meridiana, Montbau, and Can Franquesa. The objective is to address needs such as improving accessibility, community outdoor spaces, expanding housing, incorporating thermal insulation, and carrying out renaturalization actions. “The university needs to go out into the streets – warns Ravetllat –, research must be applied research, not just erudite and introspective research. We must be able to make this citizen research visible, so that people understand that architecture improves citizens' lives”.

Josep Ferrando

Josep Ferrando has said of himself that, rather than focusing on construction, he combines the roles of artisan, academic, and cultural manager. He is the director of the La Salle School of Architecture. To discuss the qualities of architecture, he has used the metaphor of a nest, which is made with "materials from the environment, resilient and linked to the circular economy." He also advocates for "rigorous, systematic, flexible, and versatile" architecture, capable of responding to future challenges. Among his best-known works is the fire station in Moia, created with Pedro García, Mar Puig, and Manel Casellas. It is the first one made with wood in Catalonia. Also, a building at the Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires and an installation for BBConstrumat 2019 made with geotextile and metal beams from the Sagrada Família, designed to create welcoming spaces without generating waste.

Marta Peris and José Manuel Toral (Peris + Toral)

Marta Peris and José Manuel Toral form one of the most innovative studios in the field of collective housing. They won the RIBA award for excellence for the Modulus Matrix building in Cornellà de Llobregat. Peris+Toral have a holistic view of housing: the material and social parts are intimately linked. Among the projects they have in hand is Can Setanta, designed for about twenty people who want to grow old together. "Spatial perception is key to the way of inhabiting. For us, there is a whole constructive, physical dimension, of materials that you can touch. But there is also a perceptive dimension that has to do with emptiness, with visuals, with how a dwelling is emptied and how space is perceived, how it is inhabited, how it generates memories," says Marta Peris in an interview with ARA.

Lacol

The La Borda cooperative housing block internationally consecrated this studio with the Mies van der Rohe Award for Emerging Architecture. "This cooperative project is transgressive in its context because, while housing production is mainly dominated by macroeconomic interests, in this case the model is based on co-ownership and co-management of shared resources and capabilities," said the jury, which also praised the studio's service vocation and structure: "The model goes beyond the specific cooperative housing project: the studio also functions as a cooperative where fourteen professionals with different knowledge offer a model to follow and an active tool to promote political and urban change from within the system, based on social, ecological, and economic sustainability".

Josep M. Borell (Impsol)

Josep Maria Borrell is an essential figure in the renovation of public housing in Catalonia as director of IMPSOL, a public company of the AMB that manages land and promotes public housing with a vision of integral sustainability. IMPSOL has promoted around 7,000 homes in about 100 developments, with national and international awards including FAD, CSCAE, BEAU, and RIBA. "The building will be built for 100 years. We know who we are now and how we live now, but we have no idea what will happen in 20, 30, or 80 years. Therefore, what we have to do is create habitable social infrastructures with a lot of flexibility." Buildings, in essence, that adapt to circumstances," Borrell stated to ARA a few weeks ago. Among the ongoing developments, he has chosen one for this report, a tower of 35 public housing units in Molins de Rei, by Metrònom Arquitectura and Frederic Villagrasa. One of the unique features of the homes is that they include a large interior terrace-gallery, conceived as "a semi-exterior space that functions as a thermal buffer and an extra room" for daily life.

Maria Charneco, Anna Puigjaner and Guillermo López (MAIO)

Maio are Maria Charneco, Alfredo Lérida, Guillermo López and Anna Puigjaner. They are known for their work on all scales, from furniture to innovative public housing blocks. One of their most daring proposals is the Vatican pavilion at the last Venice Architecture Biennale, made with the Mexican Tatiana Bilbao, the result of turning the rehabilitation of an old church into the theme of the pavilion. It is a reflection of the sensitivity, imagination and ambition with which architects interpret the place where they work, because adapting to the characteristics of the site and materials is one of the strategies for making more sustainable buildings. "We are an architecture firm that deals with many social and gender justice issues," states Anna Puigjaner, who is also the author of one of the installations in the central exhibition of the congress.

Atienza Maure

The architects Alonso Atienza Sánchez and Miguel Ángel Maure Blesa graduated from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (ETSAM) and are based in Madrid and Barcelona, where they work as project professors at the La Salle School of Architecture and Building Engineering. They say about themselves that in their projects they have two starting points: the climatic, historical, and material conditions of the site and the construction processes". "We are fascinated by the ingenuity and simplicity with which bricklayers solve construction details, which almost always disappear with finishes, which is why we try to learn from these processes and make them visible in the final result", assure Atienza Maure.

three hundred thousand

The think tank trescientosmil was co-founded and is directed by Pablo Martínez and Mar Santamaria, with the support of Ana Badenas and Gonzalo Díaz. They work, as they themselves say, at "the intersection of arts, science, and technology", with "the commitment to address the new disruptions that are transforming our world — with the aim of building more inclusive, just, healthy, and prosperous societies". trescientosmil work with data: they produce, cross-reference, interpret, and visualize it to intervene in urban policies and planning and cultural debate, through indicators, narratives, and data visualizations. Among their projects are "Atlas of Vulnerability in Spain", "Diagnosis of Culture in Barcelona", "Gender Atlas of Bologna", and "Last Mile Delivery Plan in Barcelona.Lluís Ortega

Architect Lluís Ortega participated in the UIA architects congress with a reflection on the impact of AI in the discipline. He applied it in the project Recycling Intelligences, a four-handed investigation with Julia Capomaggi that applies an AI model to a set of about five hundred social housing competition proposals to generate new proposals. All of this is made visible in an installation that could be seen at the last Venice Architecture Biennale and is currently exhibited at the Suñol Foundation. “The introduction of new technologies in what are the most urgent challenges for society is very relevant”, states Lluís Ortega, from Etsav.

Jaume Mayol and Irene Pérez (Ted'A)

"TEd’A Arquitectes always look at local culture, nearby materials, and the knowledge born from artisans they adore in a new light. They look towards contemporaneity", states Cristina Ros about the work of Jaume Mayol and Irene Pérez. They keep receiving awards: since last November they have won the Grand Prize BigMat in the Proximity category and the absolute European award for the Ca na Birgit house, in Calvià. A few weeks later they were recognized with the Holcim Europe Award, granted for the project of the new school in Gaüses, in Empordà, and they were also distinguished with one of the awards of the Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (BEAU XVII) for the Can Gabriel house, in Palma. The streak continues, and a few weeks ago they received one of the awards from the Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain for the House in the Colònia de Sant Pere.

Eduard Callís and Guillem Moliner (A Pair of Architects)

Eduard Callís and Guillem Moliner usually make a virtue of necessity: in their latest work, the Jardins de la Muralla in Olot, they recycled existing concrete pieces. And, on the other hand, they collaborated with the Paris-based Olot choreographer Tomeu Vergès and Elena Masanas, who is a facilitator of community and organizational change processes, so that the neighbors would get to know each other and make the place their own. "It was very special, it ended with seven minutes of applause, and the neighbors and the builders jumping while hugging each other," recalls Callís. In fact, Callís and Moliner are among the main figures responsible for the recovery of the old town of Olot as authors of the "Pla de places i placetes d'Olot" (Plan of squares and small squares of Olot), which has involved returning colors to the facades of the buildings in the Plaça Major.

Lluís Alexandre Casanova

The architect, curator, and critic Lluís Alexandre Casanovas made his name with the Real Estate Boom House, the result of subverting the harshness of a typical home from the real estate bubble years with soft, artisanal, and fragile elements, an idea that can be found in the banners he designed with Paula Chalko for the latest edition of Mondiacult. He was the general curator of the Oslo Architecture Triennale in 2016 and later was the Architecture curator for the Collections department of the Reina Sofía Museum. And he collaborated with the museum's former director, Manuel Borja-Villel, on the staging of the exhibition Museu habitat, another exhibition of architecture that critically seeks to distill its own essence.

Pol Esteve Castelló

The practice of Pol Esteve Castelló is found, as he himself says, at "the intersection of space, technology, bodies and subjectivity, with a special interest in anonymous architectures and queer thought and practice".queer". He develops his work in different formats, from texts to installations, such as the one he has just presented at the central exhibition of the UIA congress. Puente Editores has just published a collection of his articles, Dangerous Architecture. And among the most recent works of the studio he shares with Miquel Mariné, Goig, is the exhibition space of the Catalan pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Paper tears. On the other hand, Esteve is a professor at the Architectural Association in London and at ETH Zurich.

Cristian and César Vivas (Vivas Arquitectes)

Among the notable works of Cristian and César Vivas, known for their social and innovative approach, there is a string of protected housing blocks, some with industrialized systems and compacted earth. One of their best-known buildings is the first reception center for homeless women in Barcelona; which two years ago received the award from the Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain in the category of professional and ethical values for "moving away from facilities for homeless people by enhancing the domestic character of the rooms through scale and openness to the outside".