The 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 interpretation of the site is one of the essential elements of the architecture of Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta (RCR). These architects from Olot have often worked in the Garrotxa landscape and have also demonstrated their talent for doing so in cities. In their most recent work, La Parada, the innovative residence they designed in Manresa for the Ampans Foundation, the building clearly improves the site, originally a "nondescript" plot on the outskirts of Manresa, as Pigem says. This residual site was only distinguished by its rather elongated shape, measuring 150 x 45 m, and the RCR have made it their own with a stepped building that has the vocation of a landscape, where the boundaries between the public space and the residence's garden are blurred.