RCR Arquitectes   Spain   As a result of the close collaboration between the architects and the owners – the Suqué-Mateu family –, the project to build the new winery, by fields of vineyards and a country estate, started to take shape a decade ago. The relationship with the l

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos   Spain   Since the day in September 1908 that a journalist working for La Veu de Catalunya gave the region a name which described its dramatic geography and topography, the Costa Brava – a rugged land of fisherfolk – has honed its image as a paradise by the s

MAIO   Spain   The boundaries of the masia are expanded with a light structure of posts that transforms the whole space into a pergola underneath which two new constructions, with lighter roofs, add a series of independent rooms and programs...

TEd’A arquitectes   Spain   To reduce the project to a domestic scale, the program is divided into several sequenced spaces that go from the collective to the private. Local resources are combined with strategies aimed at making the building work on its own...

Plasencia Arquitectura   Spain   This refurbished building is located in the Mas Xirgu industrial complex, on the outskirts of Girona. The commission consisted in converting an industrial warehouse that was no longer in use into a funeral service building for the city. The original

Zaga arquitectura   Spain   Amid farming fields bordered by trees and paths, with Mount Canigou as backdrop, stands this dwelling built by Zaga arquitectura (Nicolás Markuerkiaga, Mariana Plana, Maribel González), a 110-square-meter bungalow broken up into two volumes clad in w

Ágora arquitectura   Spain   In the Catalonian province of Girona, in the comarca of Baix Empordà, a house amid sunflower fields is beset by strong Tramontana winds. The commission assigned to the firm Ágora Arquitectura – led by Joan Casals Pañella and Jose Luís Cisneros Bardol

Bellafilarquitectes   Spain   In L’Escala, a municipality in the Alt Empordà comarca of Girona province, stands this one-family residence designed by Bellafilarquitectes, the Barcelona practice of Albert Massagué and Marta Andreu. With a built area of 204 square meters, it was de

Tigges Architekt   Spain   This threel-level residence in the Montjuïc neighborhood of Girona gives privileged views of the Sant Daniel Valley and the Montseny range. The basement and the ground floor present a concrete structure pigmented with brown tones, and serve as a base

bosch.capdeferro arquitectura   Spain   In a part of the city that creates a transition between the built-up fabric and the open urban expansion area characterized by the imposing presence of public facilites, the project proposes 35 apartments with a design based on principles of program

Mesura   Spain   “Una casa come me” was the instruction that Curzio Malaparte gave Adalberto Libera when he contracted him to build the villa in Capri that Brigitte Bardot would immortalize walking down its stepped roof, wrapped in a bathrobe, in the Godard film. Equ

Twobo arquitectura Luis Twose   Spain   The town of Vilajuïga is in a privileged location, between Serra de Verdera and Cap de Creus natural park, and is well connected to the rest of the region. With a population slightly over 1,000 inhabitants, Vilajuïga has a long food and wine traditio

unparelld’arquitectes   Spain   The core of Olot has the same problem that many historical towns have to contend with: the indiscriminate demolitions that result in empty lots going abandoned, disfiguring the street and ultimately destroying the urban decorum of public space. In th

Lagula Arquitectes   Spain   Close to the El Molí power plant and the Puente de Piedra (stone bridge) over the river Onyar in Girona, at Santa Clara 11, stands this residential block by Lagula Arquitectes, the Barcelona firm headed by Toni Alonso, Martín Ezquerro, Ignacio López,

Emilio Tuñón Arquitecturia   Spain   The new cloister functions as a topographical link with the garden, accentuating its greenery by creating a new forest of columns that extends and connects with the museum; outside, stairs, platforms, and ramps guide visitors towards the entrance...

Martínez Lapeña & Elías Torres Adrià Orriols   Spain   With the idea of recovering the ‘ensemble’ and giving the Monastery a new purpose, the proposal traces a closed perimeter creating a circulation ring around it; the extension, partially buried, connects with the gardens through the roof...

fuses-viader arquitectes   Spain   A sequential route leads to the new plaza of access, where the building, envisaged as a pergola, blurs its presence with glass facades that connect it with the Monastery and its gardens. The extension occupies the ground floor and semibasement... 

Calderon-Folch Arquitectes AV62 Arquitectos   Spain   The proposal reassesses the program to transform it into a coherent complex with an educational and informative potential, through a key action: giving the Monastery the Cloister Garden it is missing, a gallery around a courtyard...

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos   Spain   The Madrid practice of Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano have won first place in the competition to build a museum in San Felíu de Guíxols (Girona) to house part of Carmen Thyssen's art collection, joining those already existing in Madrid, Málaga,

Cloud 9 Enric Ruiz-Geli   Spain   This experimental house in Aiguablava (Girona) has two principal characteristic features: the sustainable way it engages with its surroundings and the manner in which it is built. The first results from adapting to the topography, respecting the prop

fuses-viader arquitectes   Spain   The project sets out to refurbish the Sant Julià de Ramis castle, a military fortress raised at the end of the 19th century, and that is located in the town of the same name, close to Girona. The ensemble was closed down in 1970, and was gradually ab

Arnau estudi   Spain   Located outside the walls of Santa Pau, a village and municipality in the Catalonian province of Girona, in eastern Spain, the Retina House is a family refuge that offers magnificent views, as its very optical name suggests. A place for the enjoyment

Harquitectes   Spain   The stone wall that marked out the boundaries of the estate went around the whole site, revealing just the tops of the trees inside. The materiality and the irregularity of the geometry of the wall endowed it with a special character and presence, bu

The franchise model has reached museums, and with energy, at least for the Carmen Thyssen Collection, whose homes in Madrid, Barcelona, and Málaga will soon be joined by a fourth one in Girona, thanks to a competition where the Madrid firm Nieto Sobe

El País   Luis Fernández-Galiano   Land architecture, but also architecture of the land. After three decades of work, Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta have obtained universal recognition for a stubbornly local oeuvre: the most media-savvy award of them all has distinguish

Julia Schulz-Dornburg   The restoration of the Club Med estate in the Cap de Creus reveals the paradoxes inherent in human interventions on nature.

El proyecto de rehabilitación de una vivienda en el centro histórico de Gerona —diseñado por Ramón Bosch y Elisabet Capdeferro— ha merecido la Mención Especial Arquitecto Emergente en la última edición de los premios Mies van der Rohe. Concebido por

Josep Llinás construirá el futuro Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Bòlit de Gerona. Concebido como un museo abierto y expresivo, el edificio adapta su forma al tamaño de las salas interiores iluminadas cenitalmente, plegando su envolvente y disponiendo s

La localidad catalana de Olot, y más concretamente, su Club de Patinaje Artístico —pentacampeón mundial en la modalidad Grupo Show— cuenta con nuevas instalaciones; una pista cubierta de patinaje sobre ruedas y un pabellón polideportivo, firmados por

Carlos Jiménez   Aranda Pigem Vilalta – RCR Arquitectes – are magicians of mineral and natural discoveries. Their architecture conjures sensual intimations, refractions, and densities from the most elemental material conditions, whether a single sheet of Cor-ten stee

Richard Ingersoll   They did not gag or blind-fold me, but for two days I was a guest of a group of architectural extremists, in the lost horizon of Olot. This small city rests amid the remains of a few extinct volcanoes at the foot of the Pyrenees between Catalonia and

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The architecture of RCR (Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramón Vilalta) combines romantic rauxa with rational rigor. Based in Olot, the capital of La Garrotxa – a Pre-Pyrenean region in Catalonia, filled with extinct volcanoes and pleasant landscapes

Marta García Carbonero   Viviendas en Gerona y Alcoy The modest architecture of social housing is 1999’s resounding winner of the Fomento de las Artes Decorativas Awards. An apartment block by Arcadi Pla in Gerona and a residential development by Manuel de Solà-Morales in th