The architectural transformation of Olot's old town is unstoppable. "There had been so many plans that the residents were tired and wanted action," says architect Eduard Callís, the founder with Guillem Moliner of the studio Un Parell d'Arquitectes. This studio is responsible for a major recent project, the Pla de places i placetes of Olot. This Saturday, Callís guided the public through these works during a visit organized by the Group of Architects for the Defense and Intervention in Architectural Heritage (AADIPA) of the College of Architects of Catalonia. The most recent of these works are the Jardins de la Muralla, the result of injecting life into "a kind of empty space" that emerged from the demolition of a residential building about twenty years ago. "There were only two rows of plane trees and a esplanade, and the residents were very interested in transforming the place into a garden, and in this garden connecting the city with the river," says the architect. The inauguration is scheduled for May 8.

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.