RCR Arquitectos

The trend that the Pritzker Prize seemed to have adopted in its latest editions with laureates like Alejandro Aravena or Shigeru Ban did not seem to point in the direction of RCR Arquitectes, a trio whose radical architecture at first sight doesn’t seem to fit in with the Zeitgeist’s social and committed spirit. In truth, RCR’s commitment is with architecture and places, so the 2017 Pritzker - with a jury presided by an architect also closely tied to the local, Glenn Murcutt - has meant a return to the ecumenical perspective that had characterized the prize since its first edition in 1978. The award, presented at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo on 20 May, also brought good news for Spanish architecture, which was still recovering from the crisis and had not received the distinction since Moneo’s Pritzker in 1996. Based in Olot (Girona), Aranda, Pigem, and Vilalta founded RCR Arquitectes in 1988, and are the authors of buildings like the Soulages Museum in Rodez (2014), La Lira Theater in Ripoll (2011), and the Bell-lloc Winery in Palamós (2007), all of these are works in which the sensitive reading of context is combined with the sophisticated creation of aterial atmospheres.