Barcelona, Best Architecture Guide: 20 buildings to discover the Ciudad Condal, BCN

Fermín Vázquez Huarte-Mendicoa (Madrid, 1961) architect since 1988. He studied at ETSAM (Madrid) and ETSAB (Barcelona). He leads b720 Fermín Vázquez Architects, which he set up with Ana Bassat in 1997, with offices in Barcelona, Madrid, Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre.

b720 is an international studio. It works globally within its offices in Brasil and Spain, in projects located in a dozen of differents countries.

The work of the studio, which has been showed in several events and museums as the Biennal of Venice, the Cité of París and MoMA of NY, has been awarded nationally and internationally with several prizes, among there are two RIBA Awards, a World Architecture Festival award, four awards ASPRIMA-SIMA, the Emporis Skyscraper Award and the European Public Urban Space award.

Among his best-known projects there are the Agbar Tower -with Jean Nouvel Architectures-, Lérida's airport, the Plaza del Torico in Teruel, La Mola Conference Centre in Barcelona, the City of Justice of Barcelona and the building for de America Cup in Valencia -both with David Chipperfield Architects- and the Gran Casino Costa Brava in Lloret de Mar. Currently working, among other projects, on the new Mercat dels Encants in Barcelona, the new international airport of Cuzco in Perú, the regeneration of the Waterfront of Cais Mauá of Porto Alegre, a new neighbourhood for 70.000 residents in Brasilia and in several high buildings in Sao Paulo.

He usually combines the proffesional practise with teaching. He has been teacher at ETSAB, at l'École d'Architecture et Paysage de Burdeos, at Universidad Europea de Madrid and he has given courses and conferences large universities and institutions all over the world.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born in Aquisgran the 27th of Marz of 1886 and died in Chicago the 17th of August of 1969. He was active in Germany, from 1908 to 1938, when he moved to USA and where he was until his death. He was also considerate a “master” of the Modern Movement, since the 50s, and he was one of the fathers of this movement with Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Mies van der Rohe, who in his childhood was guided by masters as Hendrik Petrus Berlage or Peter Behrens, he always kept tabs of the Villlet-Le-Duc’s rationalism or Karl Friedrich Schinkel eclectic classicism, having a strong connection with the architectural historicism. As he said in his manifesto “Baukunst und Zeiwille” about this: “it is not possible to move on looking back”.

In 1900 he began to work with his father in the stone workshop of the family and shortly afterward he move to Berlin to work with Bruno Paul in 1902, designing furniture. He planned his first house in 1907, the “Riehl House” in Neubabelsbers and worked from 1908 to 1911 in Peter Behrens’s studio. There he was influenced by structural technics and designs based on steel and glass, as the AEG project in Berlin. While he was in Behrens’s studio he designed the Perls House.

In 1912 he openned his own studio and projected a house in The Hague for Kröller-Müller marriage. The studio received few jobs in its first years, but Mies, contrary to architects as Le Corbusier, in his first years he already showed an architectural policy to follow, being an architect that changed little his architectural philosophy. To his epoch belonged the Heertrasse House and Urbig House as his principal projects.

In 1913 se move to the outskirts of Berlin with his wife Ada Bruhn with whom he would have three kids. The family broke up when Mies was posted to Romania during the World War I.

In 1920, Ludwig Mies changed his surname to Mies van der Rohe and in 1922 he joined as member to the “Novembergruppe”. One year later, in 1923, he published the magazine “G” with Doesburg Lisstzky and Rechter. During this period he worked in two houses, the Birck House and the Mosler House. In 1926, Mies van der Rohe held the post of chief commissioner of the German Werkbund exhibition, being his president this year. In this period he projected the Wolf House in Guden and the Hermann Lange House in Krefeld and in 1927, he met the designer Lilly Reich, in the house exhibition of Weissenhof, where he was director, and he planned a steel structure block for her.

In 1929, he received the project the German National Pavilion to the International Exhibition of Barcelona) rebuilt in 1986=, where he included the design of the famous Barcelona Chair.

In 1930, he planned in Brün – present Czech Republic -, the Tugendhat Villa. He managed the Dessau’s Bauhaus until his closure in 1933. The Nazism forced Mies to emigrate to the United States in 1937. He was designated chair of the Architecture department in Armour Institute in 1938, the one that later merged with the Lewis Institute, forming the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and where he took the responsibility to build a considerable extent of the foundations of the Intitute from 1939 and 1958. One of the buildings of this complex is the Crown Hall, IIT (1950-1956).

In 1940, he met the person who would be his partner until his death, Lora Marx. He became citizen of the USA in 1944 and, one year later, he began with the Farnsworth House’s project (1945-1950). During this stage, in 1948, he designed his first skyscraper: the two towers of the Lake Drive Apartments in Chicago, which were finished in 1951. Shortly after, he planned other building of this typology, the Commonwealth Promenade Apartments, from 1953 to 1956.

In 1958 he projected his most important work: the Segram Building in New York. This building has 37 storeys, covered with glass and bronze, which built and planned with Philip Johnson. He retired from the Illinois Institute of Technology the same year. He also built more towers and complexes as: the Toronto Dominion Centre (1963-1969) and the Westmount Square (1965-1968) and designed the New Square and Office Tower of The City of London (1967).

From 1962 to 1968, he built the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, which would be his last legacy to the architecture. The building that rose as exhibition hall is made of steel, glass and granite.

He died in Chicago the 17th of August if 1969 leaving behind a large legacy and influence to next generations.

The Mies van der Rohe’s most famous sentences are “Less is more” and “God is in the details”.
 

Enric Miralles Moya (Barcelona 1955 - Sant Feliu de Codines 2000) studied at the Barcelona School of Architecture, ETSAB, graduating in 1978. From 1973 to 1983 he collaborated with Albert Viaplana and Helio Piñón, and in 1984 he founded the Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós studio, from this stage one of his most poetic works stands out, such as the Igualada Cemetery. In 1993 he began the EMBT study with his wife and partner Benedetta Tagliabue.

Considered an architect of great inventiveness, he defined himself as the enfant terrible of Spanish architecture. He was a Fulbright Visiting Professor at Columbia University for the 1980-81 academic year. Two years later, he presented his doctoral thesis "Things seen to the left and the right, (without glasses)."

Since 1985 he was professor at ETSAB (Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona), holding the Chair of Architecture since 1996. In 1990 he began as Director and Professor of the Master Class at Städelschule of Frankfurt and beginning in 1992 served as the "Kenzo Tange Chair” professor at the GSD of Harvard University. Moreover, he was visiting professor and lecturer at several universities in the United States (Columbia, Princeton, Harvard, Yale), Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, and a member of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland.

As an architect of many works, his projects include, the Igualada Cemetery in Spain (1995) and the rehabilitation of Utrecht City Hall in Holland (2000). He was also active as an interior designer, with projects including The Hipostila shelving system(1989) in collaboration with Lluis Clotet and Oscar Tusquets Blanca for Bd Ediciones de Diseño, Lungomare Bench for Escofet,(2000), Vacante bench for Sellex (1991), and many other furnishing designs which were not put in production.

He has received numerous awards, including the National Prize of Spanish Architecture 1995, FAD Prize (Fomento Artes Decorativas) 1985 and 2000, The European ITALSTAD (Italy) 1991. Leone d’Oro Prize at the Biennale di Venezia 1996. His work has been published internationally in the most distinguished reviews, El Croquis N.100 101, Enric Miralles Benedetta Tagliabue 1996-2000. GG. Miralles Tagliabue Time Architecture 1999. Electa, Documenti di Architettutra. Benedetta Tagliabue. Enric Miralles: Opere e Progetti. 1996. In 1999 he was named an Honorary member of The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. In 2002 he received posthumously the Gold Medal from the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya.

Benedetta Tagliabue was born in Milan (June 24, 1963) and graduated from the University of Venice in 1989. In 1991 she joined Enric Miralles’ studio eventually becoming a partner. Her work with Miralles, whom she married, includes several high-profile buildings and projects in Barcelona: Parque Diagonal Mar (1997-2002), Head Office Gas Natural (1999-2006) and the Market and Quarter Santa Caterina (1996-2005), as well as projects across Europe, including the School of Music in Hamburg (1997-2000) and the City Hall in Utrecht (1996-2000).

In 1998 the partnership won the competition to design the new Scottish Parliament building. Despite Miralles’ premature death in 2000, Tagliabue took leadership of the team as joint Project Director and the Parliament was completed in 2004, winning several awards.

She won the competition for the new design of Hafencity Harbor in Hamburg, Germany, a subway train station in Naples, and the Spanish Pavilion for Expo Shanghai 2010 among others.

Today under the direction of Benedetta Tagliabue the Miralles-Tagliabue-EMBT studio works with architectural projects, open spaces, urbanism, rehabilitation and exhibitions, trying to conserve the spirit of the Spanish and Italian artisan architectural studio tradition which espouses collaboration rather than specialization.

Their architectural philosophy is dedicating special attention to context.

Benedetta has written for several architectural magazines and has taught at, amongst other places, the University of Architecture ETSAB in Barcelona. She has lectured at many international architectural Forums as, for example, the RIBA, the Architectural Association and Bartlett School in, London, the Berlage Institut in Amsterdam, and in the USA, China and South America.

Carme Pinós i Desplat graduated with a degree in architecture from the school of Architecture in Barcelona (ETSAB) in 1979. In the mid 1980s the architectural proposals she developed in partnership with Enric Miralles obtained recognition in several architectural competitions. In 1991 she set up her own studio and since then she has combined her activity as an architect with teaching as a guest professor at different universities such as the Graduate Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation de Columbia University (1999), the École Polytechnique Féderale of Lausanne (2001-02), the Graduate  School of Design of Harvard University (2003), the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (2005-06) o la Universitá di Roma Tre (2007-08).

Her built work and projects have been exhibited at several galleries and museums. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris hold models of her projects in their permanent collections. Her work has been published in several monographs (Actar, 1998: Monacelli Press 2004; “Documentos de Arquitectura”, nº 60, 2006). In 2008 she received the National Prize for Architecture and Urban Space from the Catalan Government in recognition of her entire professional career.