Xevi Bayona (Olot, Spain, 1982), founder of Bayona Studio, is an architect and artist from Olot. He studied Fine Arts in Olot, trained as an architect at ETSAB (Technical School of Architecture of Barcelona) with his final project—a Library-Playroom in Espinho, Portugal—and also studied at FAUP (Faculty of Architecture at the University of Porto). He holds a postgraduate degree in Landscape Design from ETSAB and a Master’s degree in Theory and Practice of Architectural Design from ETSAB, with the thesis “The Girona of the Streets – Scale.”
From the very beginning, he has been the Artistic Director of Lluèrnia, the Festival of Fire and Light in Olot. Since 2008, he has been a professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Girona. Since 2018, he has taught in the international master’s program in ephemeral architecture at Elisava. He has given lectures, led workshops, and carried out ephemeral installations in various European cities. He has won several awards, including three FAD awards, with numerous finalist and selected projects. He has received architectural awards and honourable mentions from the Girona region, and was awarded the 2025 European AHI Architectural Heritage Intervention Award and the 2024 International City Scape Award for the renovation of el Firal in Olot, a project developed with Jaume Bach, Anna Bach, Eugeni Bach, Alba Colomer, and Lluís Pauné.
He won the Changing Tracks competition, a European project for three installations in Catalonia, England, and Ireland. Since 2017, he has collaborated and developed projects jointly with Àlex Posada, MID Studio.
He has completed civil works, including the restoration of the Pont de l’Estat in Tortosa over the Ebro River, the rehabilitation of the sports area of Sant Jaume de Llierca, and the Firal of Olot, as well as architectural works such as Casa dels Tres Murs, Casa Montsacopa, and the Equilibri restaurant. He has created ephemeral interventions such as The Three Kings’ Warehouse at Fabra i Coats, Farbalà at Caixaforum Barcelona, Habitare or Homeless Home, Vermell in Sweden, or Niu de foc at Lluèrnia. He is also curator, alongside Ana Amado and Jaume Prat, of the exhibition “De Puertas a Fuera” at the Casa de la Arquitectura. In 2024, he created the Christmas installation in Plaça Sant Jaume in Barcelona.
Bayona Studio is a workshop for architecture, art, and landscape located at the foot of a volcano in Olot, in the Garrotxa region.
They develop projects to explore emotions through a working method based on experimentation, research, and investigation. They create prototypes and tests that bridge architecture, urbanism, art, landscape, ephemeral installations, and light.
They design atmospheres and landscapes on various physical scales, but especially temporal scales that shape the essence of each project. Their work seeks beauty through a respectful and insightful understanding of the social, anthropological, physical, and cultural environments, to ask questions about the world we inhabit.
