Architecture’s Pritzker Prize lauds Spanish trio for ‘a strong sense of place’ – The Globe and Mail

Architectures biggest award has gone not to a star, but to a group of three Spanish designers deeply committed to creating a sense ofplace.

The Hyatt Foundation announced Wednesday that Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta, who lead the Catalan firm RCR Arquitectes, had won the $100,000 (U.S.) Pritzker Architecture Prize. Often called architectures Nobel Prize, it has previously gone to many leading figures in architecture, among them Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano and the late ZahaHadid.

Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and RamonVilalta.

Javier LorenzoDomnguez

RCR are little-known outside of Spain; much of their work is in Catalonia, concentrated on their small hometown of Olot, where they set up shop in 1988. While several recent winners of the Pritzker have focused on humanitarian issues designing social housing or temporary shelters RCRs win signals a turn back to interests in craft and, in particular, site and culture. It is a victory for slowarchitecture.

All their works have a strong sense of place and are powerfully connected to the surrounding landscape, the award jury said in a statement. This connection comes from understanding history, the natural topography, customs and cultures, among other things and observing and experiencing light, shade, colours and theseasons.

Bell-Lloc Winery, Palams, Girona,Spain.

Hisao Suzuki

The Pritzker jury cited specific projects, including outdoor space at Les Cols Restaurant in Olot and the firms own office in a former foundry. These projects use the local volcanic rock; at the restaurant, it is in dialogue with pristine glass cubes that evoke minimalist sculpture and Japanese modern architecture, and berms of earth. The space is quite literally rooted in theground.

Similarly, their most recognized work, the Soulages Museum, is carved into the crest of a hill and forms a sort of sculpture in dialogue with landscape. The museum, in the southern French town of Rodez, is devoted to the work of the painter Pierre Soulages. It is a line of blocks clad in weathering steel, the material made famous by the artist Richard Serra. Yet it articulates the local geography, turning a face of glass towards a park and the historic centre of the town, while presenting a tougher, impermeable face toward modern commercialdevelopments.

La Lira Theater Public Open Space in Ripoll, Girona, Spain.(2011)

Hisao Suzuki

We are used to reading the site as of it had its own alphabet, Pigem says in documentary video produced by the Pritzker. And she says elsewhere, A great motivating force is to be able to discover the treasure of each place, or where the magicresides.

These traditional concerns of architecture were sometimes set aside by the Modernist movement of the 20th century in its push for rationalism and efficiency. The past three decades in architecture have been a dialogue between work that is driven by more personal agendas like Frank Gehrys and work that draws from its place. The latter tendency is a strength in Canada, where firms such as Shim-Sutcliffe, Mackay-Lyons Sweetapple and Patkau Architects have developed strong bodies of work that are somewhat local in theirapproaches.

Sant Antoni-Joan Oliver Library, Senior Citizens Center and Candida Perez Gardens in Barcelona, Spain.(2007)

Eugeni Pons

And then, more recently, architecture has taken a turn toward social concerns. The Pritzker has reflected that, beginning with the 2014 choice of the architect Shigeru Ban, whose work has bridged high design and humanitarian concerns. Last years award went to the Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, best known for social housing that allows residents to contribute their own labour to the process. In social housing, there is no time for whats not strictly necessary, he told me. There is no arbitrariness. Aravenas win seemed to cement a shift in values for the prize to a type of design that aimed to change the world. It was an award for a set of values rather than pureaccomplishment.

Aranda, Pigem and Vilalta represent a gesture the other way, back toward architecture as a medium for subtle and slowcraft.

Row House in Olot, Girona, Spain(2012)

Hisao Suzuki

Their win also breaks ground in that there are three of them, and that one is a woman. Since its beginnings in 1979, the award has almost always gone to an individual, with only two exceptions, and only two winners have been women, which has generated contentious debate within a profession where women are underrepresented in many professional roles. In 1991, the Pritzker went to Robert Venturi, the American architect and theorist but not to Denise Scott Brown, who has been his lifelong collaborator in the office Venturi Scott Brown Associates. In 2013, a group of students at Harvard University organized a petition; they proposed that Venturis Pritzker should retroactively be shared with Scott Brown. The prizes organizers shot that ideadown.

Yet this years award recognizes the value ofcollaboration.

Ideas arrive from dialogue and collaboration by more than one person, says Vilalta in another video. Its almost a reaction against the contemporary world, which has promoted, in an exaggerated way, the value of theindividual.

Indeed architecture is, now more than ever, a collaborative art. And the Pritzkers newest laureates seem ready to confirm that in an atomized and globalized age, there is power in working together, and going slowly, and stayinghome.

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Architecture's Pritzker Prize lauds Spanish trio for 'a strong sense of place' - The Globe and Mail