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

BarcelonaThe thirty or so Catalan firms 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 great social and environmental challenges. "The selection of firms 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 Pau 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.

Even so, Bajet recalls that the great challenges of today are not new, but that 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 questions of form, but we have integrated elements of passive architecture, vernacular, and resources for regulating 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 training. "Up to the generation that is up to 40 years old, let's say, we all received an 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 the awareness is beginning to be gained that 38% of carbon dioxide emissions correspond to construction, but this happens that, no matter how much 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 Cuchí, professor at the Vallès Higher Technical School of Architecture (Etsav) specializing in architectural sustainability, and Greta Tresserra, the person responsible for the decarbonization workshops 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 regarding natural resources and the climate," 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 return to work, they found that all these concerns have meant 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 mention the impact of 15-M, Occupy Wall Street, and some of the discussions around the city, city governance, and discourses on growth and the desire to maintain ourselves. In our case, we don't have a problem: we don't want the business to be upward and to get bigger and bigger, but to maintain ourselves, have work, and 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 we do have 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 a lot more architecture for the middle class than was done before."

Another of the congress's lines that Bajet highlights is the weight that architects from the Global South carry. "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 given context, with certain trades and in a given natural environment".

These are the 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 to work 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 award 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 leave for a few years to London, 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 poetry, 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 requested, 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 the intention to question social and collective memory, as well as that of 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, done with Marc Riera, the result of the rehabilitation of a property acquired in 1926 by the Institució Cultural Magdalena Aulina, which had various uses over time. On the other hand, Sarquella is co-author of the 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 on "the intersection between architecture, environmental imaginaries, and civic technologies", as they themselves say. Before creating FAST, they worked together at the Model Barcelona architecture festival. Currently, Franch is a professor at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, and De Vicente teaches at centers such as IAAC and Columbia University. In some interviews, Franch has argued that architects must work for a "single client": the ecological and climatic scale of the planet.

TAKK

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 built 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 waste 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 environments, 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 theatre, the Variétés, in Brussels, and the recovery of the Favorita warehouse in Poblenou. "When we deal with heritage issues, it shocks us and we find it difficult to understand that a partial reading of buildings is made," Flores said in an interview with ARA. "The main facade of the Variétés theatre is protected, but the other one seems to have no value, and we are interested in seeing how the contrast between the two works. In 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, to treat 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 result of ten years of work: the expansions 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 zeal 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 – states Roger Tudó–. We also try to achieve this even if the building is brand new. 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 seagrass 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 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 prizes 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 elements and developing work of a transversal nature 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 run workshops with design students to create objects from materials recovered from the beach. 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 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 regenerating housing in a sustainable way, specifically in Ciutat Meridiana, Montbau, and Can Franquesa. The objective is to respond to 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 street – warns Ravetllat –, research must be applied research, not just scholarly research tending towards something introspective. 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 a "rigorous, systematic, flexible, and versatile" architecture that can respond to future challenges. Among his best-known works is the fire station in Moia, built together with Pedro García, Mar Puig, and Manel Casellas. It is the first made of 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 Familia, 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 underway 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 perceptual 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 dominated mainly by macroeconomic interests, in this case the model is based on co-ownership and co-management of shared resources and capacities," said the jury, who 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. Borrell (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 need to do is create habitable social infrastructures with a lot of flexibility." Buildings that adapt to circumstances," Borrell stated to ARA a few weeks ago. Among the current 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 transforming 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 creating more sustainable buildings. “We are an architecture firm that works on many social justice and gender 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 have headquarters in Madrid and Barcelona, where they work as project professors at the Higher Technical School of Architecture and Building of La Salle. 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 the bricklayers solve the construction details, which almost always disappear with the 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 it, cross-reference it, interpret it, 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

The 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 on display at Fundació Suñol. “The introduction of new technologies in addressing society's most urgent challenges 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 new school project in Gaüses, in Empordà, and they were also distinguished with one of the awards from 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 Colonia de Sant Pere.

Eduard Callís and Guillem Moliner (Un Parell d'Arquitectes)

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 Olot choreographer based in Paris, 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 so that they would 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 one of the main people responsible for the recovery of the old town of Olot as authors of the Olot Squares and Small Squares Plan, 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 became known for the Real Estate Boom House, the result of overturning the hardness of a typical dwelling 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 Triennial 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 an 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 between 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 by 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 Barcelona first reception center for homeless women; 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".