The installation «Emotional Heritage» is structured around four sections that bring together a series of projects with which they explain their work ideas: «Draw over time», in which they present their project for the Mills Museum in Palma de Mallorca (2002); "Use value", which is explained through the projects, the Almacén Yutes de Barcelona (2005), and the
Sala Beckett, also in Barcelona (2017); «The open condition of the ruin», explained with the
Variétés Cultural Laboratory of Brussels (currently in progress); and, finally, “The right to inherit”, with which they present two other projects, the
Casal Balaguer Cultural Center in Mallorca (2016), and the Favorita Fab Lab in Barcelona (under construction).
"Emotional Heritage" by Flores & Prats. Photograph by Adrià Goula.
This is the fourth time that
Flores & Prats participates in the Venetian event. After the Biennale Architettura 2014 as part of the Collateral Event “Grafting Architecture. Catalonia at Venice,” the Biennale Architettura
2016 in the Spanish Pavilion (awarded Leone d’Oro for the Unfinished exhibition) and the Biennale Architettura 2018 in the main exhibition
FREESPACE curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara and in the Holy See Pavilion (along with 9 other international architects, they were each invited to build
a chapel on San Giorgio Island — their chapel is still open to the public), this year Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats were invited by Lesley Lokko to be part of the “Dangerous Liaisons” section of the main exhibition at the Corderie of the Arsenale in Venice. The section is composed of practitioners from around the world who work across disciplinary boundaries, geographies, and new forms of partnership and collaboration.
The audience is invited to experience how
Flores & Prats observe places and built spaces as repositories of emotions and memories. According to Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats, “People are not the only ones to contain the memory of a place. Buildings are also imbued with memories of the uses and lives that occupy them.
"Emotional Heritage" by Flores & Prats. Photograph by Adrià Goula.
The built environment reflects social behavior, speaking of a way of using the ground, sky, and a way of inhabiting. As an architect, reading the memories held in buildings and people is to think about a future that counts on the past.” This idea is reflected in the studio’s cultural approach and in its projects, especially those focused on the rehabilitation of old structures for new occupations.
The architects also suggest that when a building is closed and abandoned, it still remains alive in the memories of those who lived there. These abandoned buildings carry civic and moral values embedded through use and time, along with the stories of the people who used them over the years. These occupations have created an invisible constellation of social relationships that expand the influence of the building to a universe around it.
