Catalan architects at the Venice Architecture Biennale: grounded, sensitive, visionary

BarcelonaThe most cutting-edge Catalan architecture is rooted and, at the same time, global, experimental, and radical. And its authors often think more about the social impact of their work than about its forms. Once again, the Venice Architecture Biennale will be the global showcase of the excellence of a string of Catalan and Balearic architects of different generations, in areas that include the Catalan pavilion within the so-called collateral events, the central exhibition, curated by the English architect and engineer, Catalans will be most, and finally, the Vatican pavilion. "We need to expand the idea of sustainability," warns architect Mireia Luzárraga, founder with Alejandro Muiño of the Takk studio, who will be responsible, along with fellow architect Eva Franch, for Water parliaments, the Catalan pavilion, sponsored by the Institut Ramon Llull, as part of the collateral events, although they will also be represented in the Spanish pavilion. "It's evident, as we just saw with the blackout we suffered on Monday," Luzárraga emphasizes, "that the contemporary context and the future will continually present us with challenges due to the climate crisis, geopolitical issues, and the depletion of fossil fuels. As architects, we have the responsibility to readily take on a leading role."

More than a traditional biennial, the curator of the next edition of the Architecture Biennale, Carlo Ratti, wanted to issue a "call to action." In this report, we speak with some of the Catalan and Balearic architects who will be present and discuss how they respond to the challenges of today's world, whether from the drawing board or from university classrooms.

The multiple ways of interpreting a site

One of the most daring proposals is that of the Mayo studio in the Vatican pavilion, a reflection of the sensitivity, imagination, and ambition with which architects interpret the place in which they work, because adapting to the characteristics of the place and the materials is one of the strategies for making buildings more sustainable. Together with Maria Charneco and Alfredo Tatiana Bilbao, they have taken it to another dimension, a result of Pope Francis's desire to link architecture with society. "We are an architectural firm that works on many issues of social justice and gender," says Anna Puigjaner. "a pavilion to build society and a city," as Puigjaner also says. All of this will materialize in a space that the Venice City Council has lent them for three years, and the pavilion will consist of the restoration of the pavilion itself. "This care for the building will also be used to highlight Venetian construction techniques that are in danger of disappearing, and the building also represents the restoration of the cultural and social fabric of Venice itself," explains the architect. In addition, the pavilion will include a soup kitchen and activities organized with the municipal conservatory. "With this pavilion, the aim is to create a platform that will grow over time and strengthen social inclusion and the ties between communities living in social settings," she emphasizes.

Another proposal deeply rooted in the location is the social housing in Palma that the Harquitectes studio will be showing in the Spanish pavilion: 40% of the volume of the blocks they manufactured are made from the sandstone from the school that stood on the site, which was due to be demolished because it was in poor condition and out of compliance with regulations. "We try to take advantage of the context in which we work in the broadest possible sense, and in this case, the context provided us with this demolition material, which became a bit of a pillar and central motif of the project's strategy," says Xavier Ros, co-founder of Harquitectes with David Lorente, Josep Ricart, and Roger Tudó. "We don't use stone as it's traditionally been used, but rather we repurpose it in this cyclopean concrete that ends up being the most characteristic feature of this building: it's the structure, it's what divides all the spaces, what gives the apartments inside inertia..." he explains.

The Harquitectes are experiencing exceptional momentum after winning several major competitions, including the extensions to the MACBA and the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC), and have become a benchmark for another of the most prominent studios on the Catalan and Balearic scene, Ted'A, known for their innovation and refinement. Ted'A, formed by Jaume Mayol and Irene Pérez, will also be present in the Spanish pavilion with a home in the Mallorcan town of Llubí, Ca na Catalina and Joan. "It's the same thing that happened before the 20th century: using the resources at hand to provide a habitat or natural comfort solution for a specific project," says Jaume Mayol. "In the 20th century, it seemed that everything was possible with fossil fuels," he adds, "but that hasn't been the case, so we must recover that ancestral perspective, that vernacular and centuries-old knowledge that has truly built the local identities of every corner of the world with a single perspective. In other words, the Japanese tradition and the Mallorcan tradition are exactly the same perspective." Along these lines, one of the keys to Ca na Catalina y Joan is Mayol and Pérez's desire to "listen to the material," which can often be sandstone or some other type of stone, and work it according to "the logic of the material itself."

On the other hand, ceramics are the omnipresent material in another work in the Spanish pavilion, the renovation of the old agricultural cooperative in Flix, by Josep Camps and Olga Felip (Architecture). In this case, the discovery of a tile factory that produced the ceramic pieces was key. Camps and Felip don't work; they approach projects with a preconceived idea about the materials. "We always work with materials in two ways: we can reuse industrial materials that exist on the market; we don't reject the possibilities that technology offers us. This way, we may apply industrial materials in an artisanal way and systematize the use of a material produced by artisans," says Josep Camps.

Create architecture with all means

The work of the Takk studio and Eva Franch in the Catalan pavilion is promising, and it will also be very interesting to discover how Franch, who has had a primarily international career, looks back on the project she has developed jointly with José Luis de Vicente, with whom she forms the FAST collective. The Storm: Vernacular Geoengineering Architectures It's a reflection on the rocket launchers of the Ebro Delta, where farmers stored the rockets they fired to prevent hailstorms that could damage their rice. This is no longer done, but the buildings remain, and this ancient practice can be seen as a metaphor for current climate change. "Today, we must always understand architecture in relation to ecological and social systems, but these two issues have long been extrapolated to planetary issues," says Eva Franch. The form Franch and De Vicente have given to their research is a speculative documentary film. "We will take advantage of the Architecture Biennial to reclaim the Delta in the face of the historical injustices it has suffered, as a territory that has been so often forgotten and that we believe should be placed at the center of national policy, so that we understand that immediate action must be taken to protect a territory that is in danger of disappearing due to sediment change and water input."

The Venetian lagoon is also at risk, and this issue is addressed by the youngest Catalan architect, Caterina Miralles Tagliabue. Her surname reveals her as the daughter of two of the most important architects of recent decades, Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue. Trained at the Architectural Association in London, Miralles Tagliabue says that coming from a family of architects has allowed her to have an "insider's" perspective on the world of architecture, as she puts it, and acknowledges that her surnames have sometimes been a "help." It will be at the Architecture Biennale after going through the long selection process for a pioneering scholarship for young architects within the Biennale, thanks to which she was able to create a multidisciplinary work team and make an audiovisual on "the different intelligences that coexist in the Venetian Lagoon. "It is so affected that it is not possible to distinguish what is, between the natural, it is not distinguished what is, between the natural, it is not distinguished what is, between the natural, it is not possible to distinguish what is, between the natural, it is not possible to distinguish what is, between the natural, it is not possible to distinguish what is, between the natural, it is not possible to distinguish what is, between the natural, it is not possible to distinguish what is, between the natural, it is not possible to distinguish what is, between the natural, it is not possible to distinguish what is. and the visual arts, with this work Miralles Tagliabue gives visibility to a local group such as the fishermen who live in the lagoon.

Universities, a research engine

For a decade now, the Venice Architecture Biennale has become a reflection of the environmental and social challenges facing architects. As successive curators have sought to delve deeper into finding alternatives for the future, universities have taken on a prominent role. It is therefore not surprising to find among the Catalan architects representatives from the UPC School of Architecture, both in Barcelona and in Vallès, and architects who teach at European and American universities, such as Eva Franch at UMPRUM, the Mireia Luzárraga Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design at Columbia University, and Enric Ruiz-Geli, who teaches at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. "The relationship between the university and the real world is necessary and useful," affirms Pere Joan Ravetllat, who will be represented in the exhibition with prototypes for sustainably regenerating homes created by the UPC Architectural Rehabilitation and Restoration research group, of which he is the coordinator. "The university needs to go out into the street," Ravetllat warns, "research must be applied research, not merely scholarly and introspective. We must be able to carry out this visible citizen research, so that people understand that architecture improves the lives of citizens."

Housing is also the protagonist of Recycling Intelligences, the project that a group of researchers from Etsav and the UdG will present. This research applies an AI model to a set of around 500 proposals from social housing competitions to generate new proposals. This will result in an installation in Venice with around 500 3D-printed models. "The introduction of new technologies to what are society's most urgent challenges is highly relevant," says Lluís Ortega of Etsav. "I think it's very important that all of us who dedicate ourselves to reflecting on built space and generating new proposals are able to contribute to the social debate from our perspective, which is also somewhat speculative," he emphasizes. "The social housing that is up for competition is of very high quality, especially that built in Catalonia, so we were guaranteed to be able to create a database of higher quality than in other places in the world," says Julia Capomaggi of the UdG.

Enric Ruiz-Geli's role, on the other hand, is more practical. "My work as a Catalan architect within an American university during these seven years at Virginia Tech isn't to teach, but to open academic spaces for experimental pedagogy where we carry out projects," says Enric Ruiz-Geli. "These projects are Living Labs, which combine the academic and industrial worlds. I'm a Professor of Practice, a professor who owns a company, who has an architecture office," he explains. The Virginia Tech Honors College, which Ruiz-Geli is part of, is a model in which between twelve and fifteen students from different disciplines are chosen with the goal of carrying out a project together. "They are students in their twenties, at the beginning of their university careers. With this model, knowledge multiplies and these disciplines mutate. People who enter the biology discipline begin to be interested in design. Those from the music world are interested in their careers in computing."

Likewise, the project, named Unearthed Pollination and Second Nature, It's an unusual initiative for the Architecture Biennial. "It's a good opportunity that universities are welcome at the Biennial. But what we're doing with Virginia Tech and Cloud9 is a collaboration between industry and universities, between the professional world and the academic world," says Ruiz-Geli, who began receiving offers from American universities, including MIT, Princeton, and Yale, in 2011.

The international vocation

The founders of Takk are based between Barcelona and New York, and their reach is global. Mireia Luzárraga is from Madrid and Alejandro Muiño is from Barcelona. They have their studio and home in Hospitalet de Llobregat, but they cannot conceive of their work as teachers and architects without an international perspective. "For us, it's essential to be in contact with the entire contemporary critical thinking and design scene, to have a voice and be able to generate debates about contemporary contexts and crises," says Luzárraga. Takk have found some of the most innovative voices in their field in New York, which they combine with their work as architects. "We believe that our contribution to contemporary discussions comes through practice; we can't leave it any less than teaching, which is less than practice. We need to continue producing to have a voice," he explains. To achieve this, they constantly adapt, as they are often split between Barcelona and New York, and Luzárraga frequently adjusts his schedule to be able to coincide with the Catalans.

Another Catalan participating in the central exhibition will be Vicente Guallart, who, along with his partner at Urbanitree, Daniel Ibáñez, is behind the Barcelona Urban Tech Hub project. Guallart answers ARA's questions from China, where he is submitting a competition proposal to renovate the Xiamen waterfront. Ibáñez lives between Barcelona and Boston because he teaches at Harvard University. "Both Daniel and I follow the tradition of Solà-Morales and Oriol Bohigas of closely connecting the school and the office. We created the new environment for the Iaac (Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia) twenty-five years ago, we follow a very academic tradition, and, at the same time, we practiced." Regarding his practice, he feels connected to the tradition of Catalan architecture insofar as it is "very focused on building well." Likewise, in their quest for "constant renewal and finding new challenges," they have become one of the most advanced studios in wood architecture and the deepening of the self-sufficient city. Thus, Guallart has found role models and accomplices beyond the local ones: "IAAC has a broad international network, and on many occasions, we feel more supported by our international friends than by the local reality, which remains very local."

Buildings that liven up an entire country

For Benedetta Taglibue, returning to the Architecture Biennial means returning home: "I've lived in Barcelona for many years and I feel very much from here, but it's true that I have this side of me that's a bit of an outsider," she says. Trained at the Venice Institute of Architecture and in New York, Tagliabue has returned to the Biennial whenever possible, and this year she will do so with various projects. Among them, in the central exhibition, will be a wood and paper pavilion to call for responsible water use, in line with previous projects by the Naples studio focused on sustainability, with a large wooden roof. While the Italian pavilion will include the Parco del Mar in Rimini, with which Tagliabue proposes "a new connection between the city and the beach and the sea."

This architect's career has always had a marked international character, first with Enric Miralles, and later as principal architect of the Enric Miralles Benedetta Tagliabue studio (EMBT). The global scale of the studio will also be reflected in the Architecture Biennale, as the Albanian pavilion will showcase some of its projects, among other international studios with which the Albanian authorities hope to promote the country's architecture. "In Albania, they have left it without good construction for years, and now the president, Edi Rama, being a lover of architecture, wants to insist on good construction, and we are part of this army of good architects," says Tagliabue.