The practice, whose Arena Sportiva in Lugano we featured a few days ago as one of its most recently completed projects, was founded in Seville in 1974, shortly after its founders completed their studies. Antonio Cruz Villalón (1948) and Antonio Ortiz García (1947) had met at the Madrid School of Architecture. Their earliest projects were residential buildings, and within a few years they expanded beyond Seville, opening offices in Amsterdam and Lugano.
The floor plan of the housing development on Doña María Coronel Street, built between 1974 and 1976 in Seville's historic centre, quickly became a reference studied by generations of architecture students. Faced with the complex geometry of the plot, the project introduces a courtyard of distinctive, kidney-shaped geometry that opens up the centre of the site, organising the different dwellings and the connections between them. An apparently simple operation that expresses one of the defining characteristics of their work: finding a unified solution capable of bringing together diverse constraints.
This pursuit of stitching things together rather than imposing solutions continues across projects of very different scales. Santa Justa railway station, inaugurated in Seville in 1991, shortly before Expo '92, marked a turning point in their career and in the urban transformation of the city. The station moves beyond its role as a merely functional infrastructure, transforming movement and waiting into a spatial event that combines railway transport with an architectural image of great clarity. The project received the Spanish National Architecture Prize in 1993, a prelude to the recognition they receive today.
New Rijksmuseum by Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos. Photography courtesy of Abe Bonnema Prijs. Photography by Pedro Pegenaute.
The restoration of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which reopened in 2013, is probably one of their best-known and most complex international projects. The transformation of Pierre Cuypers' historic building made it possible to reorganise circulation, connect the interior courtyards and turn the experience of entering the museum into a spatial celebration without losing its relationship with the city. The intervention demonstrated that working with architectural heritage is not simply about preserving its elements, but also about recognising its potential and the virtues of its resilience in responding to new uses.
Their impressive body of work encompasses projects such as the Basel railway station, the offices for the Department of Public Works in Seville, the transformation of the former Community of Madrid athletics stadium into the current Metropolitano, the Faculty of Education Sciences in Seville, and various buildings within the Health Sciences Campus in Granada. These projects, despite their differing programmatic requirements, all share a consistent focus on structure, materiality, and urban relationships.
The jury also highlighted the academic dimension of their careers. Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortiz have undertaken extensive teaching activities at institutions including Harvard, Cornell, Columbia and the polytechnic schools of Zurich, Lausanne and Delft. Their involvement in establishing the Cátedra Blanca in Seville and their appointment as honorary professors at the University of Seville in 2004 reflect a commitment to the transmission of knowledge that extends beyond their professional practice.
Collage of sketches for projects by Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos.
The nomination was submitted by the Higher Council of the Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE), with the support of the Official College of Architects of the Balearic Islands and the Andalusian Council of Colleges of Architects. The jury particularly emphasised the firm's ability to integrate the different disciplines involved in architectural projects, as well as its contribution to the evolution of contemporary architecture through a rigorous professional practice committed to its context.
The 2025 National Architecture Prize thus recognises a career characterised by coherence and continuity, but also by its capacity for transformation. In contrast to an understanding of architecture as a succession of images or individual gestures, Cruz and Ortiz have defended a practice in which every decision finds its meaning within the whole. An architecture that seeks to overcome complexity through precision, and whose significance lies both in the quality of its buildings and in its contribution to contemporary architectural culture.
