The RCR, from an impossible lighthouse in the complete dream of La Vila

OlotThe architects Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta, known as RCR, won their first competition in the Canary Islands shortly after graduating from the Vallès School of Architecture. The project was for a lighthouse at Punta de la Aldea, on the west coast of Gran Canaria, and the Olot-based team submitted an exceptional proposal: instead of a tower, they designed a horizontal structure reminiscent of an outstretched hand, with the lighthouse beam at its end. Thanks to the structure's integration into the site, RCR, who won the competition in 2017, were able to create a unique and beautiful lighthouse. the Pritzker PrizeThe architects, considered the Nobel Prize of architecture, managed to achieve the same height for the light as if they had designed a tower lower down. The lighthouse was never built, but it remains an emblem of how, at the start of projects, the RCR (Royal Council of Rectors) take nothing for granted, as can be seen in the exhibition dedicated to them by the Garrotxa Museum from this Saturday until August 9th, entitled RCR Architects: Roots and Wings. A journey from the beginning to the present.This is one of the most ambitious exhibitions of his career, which will reach its fortieth year next year, and has the added value that some of his works engage in dialogue with the paintings and sculptures in the museum's permanent collection.

"The architecture of the RCR (Royal Catalan Center) is very demanding of its inhabitants, because it constantly challenges them," warns Jaume Prat, the exhibition's curator and author of the doctoral thesis. Cloud space: an analysis of the architecture of RCR Arquitectos through its atmospheres"The ideal space for RCRs is a cloud, and entry is gradual." A cloud "It has a defined shape, and at the same time it doesn't, and it varies according to the place, the time, and the weather," says Prat. Indeed, one of the most recent projects included in the exhibition, a glass-clad pavilion attached to a house in Paris, resembles another cloud. Other lesser-known projects are also on display, including the Patjoni residential complex in Tira, a ring of twelve towers ranging from fourteen to thirty stories (between approximately 54 and 110 meters) in a car-free neighborhood. Construction is planned in several phases, and the towers have a podium at their base, the roof of which is one of the largest green roofs in Europe.

You can also see a model of Agbar's corporate city in Cornellà de Llobregat, a sister building-landscape of The Stop, in ManresaAnother one is of the Seibert Bridge in Paris, for which they won the Eiffel Prize. This bridge is related to one of their great international works. the artistic and cultural hub of Île Seguinwhich includes an artists' hotel, one of the largest cinemas in Paris and more than 16,000 m²² Offices and spaces for cultural enterprises are among the models on display. It is scheduled for completion in October. Other models include the large Alfa Carrizalejo residential complex in Mexico and the sports and student activities center on the campus of the China Medical University in Taichung, Taiwan, which resembles a wave covered with a perforated copper mesh. Among the projects the RCR has under construction are the expansion of Sants station and a nearby dental clinic, whose sinuous façade blurs the profile of the corner where it stands. Also on display are rarities such as early housing projects, the Gaudí Apartments, and the first design for the Horitzó house, before its volume was fragmented.

In one of the quotes included throughout the tour, critic Daniel Giralt-Miracle highlights the power of the sensory element in the work of the architects from Olot. "RCR's architecture is space, light, shadows, atmospheres, environments, colors, landscape; they are constructions that do not close in on themselves, but open up to the outside and imply new ways of living," Giralt-Miracle states. "With this exhibition, we want to explain a way of understanding the world, of living life, if you will, of looking at life, of reflecting on life, which is expressed through architecture. What is relevant about their architecture is that it reflects a worldview much broader than what architecture itself can express. Very broad, very direct, and, moreover, there's Prada, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, the one that stands out, moreover, there's the same one, that is, moreover, there's the one that stands out, moreover, there's the same one, that is, moreover, it's, as the same one, says, moreover, there's the same one, that is, moreover, it's in the exhibition." The RCR integrates the visual arts, photography—through artists including Enric Roca Sadurní, Hisao Suzuki, Pep Bou, and Eugeni Pons—and industrial design into their philosophy.

Indeed, one of the most talked-about objects from the RCR is a wooden armchair they made specifically for Javier Cercas, for whom they scanned his body. On the other hand, one of the most striking dialogues with the Garrotxa Museum's collection is that established between the swirling engraving used to print the ceramics for the Enigma restaurant and a painting by Vayreda. And the most poignant is that of a model of the Piedra Tosca Park with the sculptures of Leonci Quera, who died prematurely in a car accident in the mid-sixties.

RCR was warned time and again that staying in Olot was reckless if they wanted to make a career out of it. Even when they won a FAD award in 2004 for the outdoor spaces of La Villa de Trincheria in the Bianya Valley, which they later made their own, some friends were still asking them when they would move to Barcelona. The journey culminates precisely with the project of The VillageThe dream location to fully develop their vision of space and conduct R&D. It will open its doors on June 28th with an exhibition of exercises on the urban integration of the Sagrada Família, carried out by students in their summer workshop over the past few years, and with an immersive experience of the space.

"Our roots in Olot have given us coherence in the process," says Ramon Vilalta, who also affirms that, although it may seem "paradoxical," the deeper these roots, the stronger the wings can be to project themselves beyond their place of origin. "What we are most proud of is having made this journey together," says Aranda. Another cornerstone of their trajectory is Espai Barberí, the former foundry very close to the museum, which they purchased in 1994 to create a large studio and cultural facility, after winning their first major international competition, The Edge, which consisted of five towers in Dubai with offices, residences, and a shopping center.

A complex architecture

The RCR's connection with Olot was very strong from the beginning, as can be seen in the special planning and protection plan for Tussols Basil, where there is an initial version from the bath pavilion which they carried out later, and in another project of an imaginary Olot fully fused with the natural environment. At the beginning of their career, they became known primarily for a series of single-family homes with pure volumes, which in the exhibition appear under the umbrella of a "white period," the result of the discovery of a limestone from Cabra (Córdoba). According to Prat, the shift towards the more characteristic language of the RCR, in which Corten steel is very often the main material, occurred between the Margarida House and the bathroom pavilion, their first intervention in the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park, where one can see how, through abstraction, they relate to nature. "The RCR always explain that the Margarida House is the masterpiece they were taught to create at the Faculty of Architecture," says Prat.

At the same time, one of the defining characteristics of the RCR's working method is its complexity; this is why they could be working simultaneously on two seemingly opposing projects. And, for Vilalta, the current situation is that of a "veiled society," which they represent with a man and a woman "cloud": "We no longer live in the liquid society that Zygmunt Bauman spoke of, but in a society that is constantly changing; things that are so defined and so dogmatic will tend to disappear, and we will inevitably have to adopt new rules and new ways of seeing each other," says Vilalta.