Catalan architects win the grand prizes of the Colleges of Architects of Spain

BarcelonaTriplet of Catalan architects in the Architecture awards given annually by the Superior Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain: Carles Enrich, the Miralles Tagliabue studio and the improvement plan for Fira de Barcelona. The awards ceremony, sponsored by Compaq, was held this Tuesday at the Teatro Alcázar in Madrid.

Carles Enrich wins the Spanish architecture award for Can Saltiri, that is, the recovery of Rupit Castle. The project aims to improve access to Rupit Castle from the urban center and condition the routes between the existing remains, which would guarantee safety and vindicate the value of the archaeological and landscape complex. A respectful intervention is proposed that allows for an improved historical understanding of the site and reinforces its urban integration.

According to the jury, the project stands out "for its capacity to integrate heritage, landscape and contemporary technique through a contained, minimal and precise intervention". "Access to the castle becomes a sensitive spatial experience in which route and structure are identified in a dialogue with the topography that stimulates new readings of the site through expressive austerity, narrative agility and economy of means", also says the jury.

On the other hand, the Spanish urban planning award has gone to the Special Urbanistic and Urban Improvement Plan for the Residential Fabric of Fira de Barcelona and La Model, carried out by the Urban Planning Department of Barcelona City Council and Barcelona Regional. "In a plot of great historical value but obsolete, the Urban Improvement Plan intervenes bravely and balancedly between tradition and innovation, creating a new centrality based on advanced criteria of sustainability and climate adaptation," states the jury. The report of this project says that the plan redefines "a key metropolitan area through the transformation of a part of the existing fair fabric, today underutilized due to the evolution of the city and new urban needs, into a mixed, accessible model oriented towards the general interest". "This project is an example of integral urban regeneration centered on people, which reveals permanence, proximity to facilities, the right to housing in the face of housing emergencies, diversity of uses, redensification, social mix, and equitable access to the urban center," the jury also says.

The third Catalan work awarded is the restoration of the Santa Caterina Market, by the Miralles Tagliabue - EMBT studio, carried out twenty years ago and recognized with the permanence award, which is given to proposals that stand out for their relevance. "In Santa Caterina, a dance unfolds without pre-planned steps, without a single direction, without a linear chronology. A dance rooted in history and art, seeking the unrepeatable as a condition of the imperishable. It does not impose itself on what has been inherited: it surrounds it, welcomes it, reactivates it," says the jury, which speaks of a "process of dynamic formation, made up of multiple relationships, superimposed layers, coexisting times," of an "overflowing action, without a precise body, a dance that configures spaces above and below a new topography, empty, light, floating." "Santa Caterina is an architecture without an expiry date," assures the jury.

In addition to the three special distinctions, the jury has awarded six prizes: to the magazine El Croquis, by Fernando Márquez, Richard Levene and Jacobo Márquez (commitment award); to the project for interventions in the Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Sixena, by Pemán y Franco Arquitectos and Sebastián Arquitectos (rehabilitation); to the strategic regeneration plan for the beach of Palma, by Victoria Fiol Duran LANDLAB (Miriam García García and Jordi Miró Rábago) (sustainability and health); to the Viciana residential building in Valencia, by José Fernández-Llebrez Muñoz (habitat); to the Services and Swimming Pool pavilion in Tibi (Alicante), by noname29-Alfredo Payá (Nova Bauhaus), and to a house located in Colònia de Sant Pere (Mallorca), by the TEd’A arquitectes studio (profession). During the ceremony, the Gold Medal of Architecture was also presented to the architect José Ignacio Linazasoro and the Lluís Comerón Graupera Architect Award to the human team of the collegiate institutions.