·

RCR architects | ...by themselves

conversation · nuances · expression

editor: Félix Arranz | associated editor: Jaume Prat Ortells

architecture + architects

scalae ebook collection #005, english collectors edition

ebook May 2013 · papercopy Feb 2017

ISBN-13: 978-1517660949 · ISBN-10: 1517660947

bookID: scalae.net-rcr-self-draftENG-20130531-01

·

scalae documents, broadcasts, and stimulates debate around, criticism of, and research into architects and other agents involved in the narration, creation, and construction of architectures that provide shelter for people’s lives and aspirations.

www.scalae.net

[index]

issue credits "RCR architects ...by themselves"

scalae international ebook collection

collection credits

conversation

nuances

expression

fish

referencies

5 works

...Olot, tranquil houses and the universal continuum

...light reveals the space and the paces

notes

net + fractal map

podcast (spanish)

collection catalogue

copyrigh

[issue credits. updated 2017]

· issue: RCR architects ...by themselves, draft, ENG. v1.0 2013; v2.0 2017

#005 scalae architecture + architects ebook collection, May 2013, scalae ed, Barcelona (Catalonia; Spain; Europe)

HARDCOPY collectors' edition, Feb 2017, scalae ed, Barcelona by means of Amazon Createspace.

· editor: Félix Arranz

· associated editor: Jaume Prat Ortells

· social management: Montserrat Arnau

· english translation: Victoria Patience [nativawordcraft.com]

· photographs: Hisao Suzuki, David Cardelús, Pep Sau and Emiliano Roia

· drawings & sketches:  RCR architects

. technical & distribution support: Micky Bou [ysi.net]

. free distribution & subscriptions: archBIB.com and scalae.net

. printed paper version (Amazon Createspace)

. ebooks@scalae.net

. disponible la versió en català a archBIB.com i scalae.net

. disponible la versión en español en archBIB.com y scalae.net

[scalae international ebook collection]

The scalae architecture + architects international ebook collection is a European initiative that began in Barcelona. It became a reality through the support and teamwork of a group of experts, institutions, and companies that are committed to the internationalization of industries and their work, product intelligence for the construction industry, and the configuration of an architectonic project based on cultural exchange and debate.

The collection is based on scalae’s earlier publications and initiatives: print publications (scalae 0.0; 2003), podcasts (scalae 1.0; 2005), and the scalae.net rss documentaries (scalae 2.0; 2009), complementary undertakings which are all still available.

Each volume in the collection focuses on a single Catalan, Spanish, European, or international architect, studio, or architectural agent, and the volume is divided into three ebooks. The first book, ...self, begins with a transcription of a conversation –usually available online as a podcast– that covers the principles, processes, and results of the person or studio in question. It also includes a selection of significant graphics or drawings of theirs in order to reflect the connection between words and signs in their way of doing architecture. The second book, ...from, includes the subject’s opinions, experience, or critiques of topics and objects they hold dear. The third book, ...about, reflects others’ opinions, experiences, and critiques of the subject’s creations, techniques, and professional and personal output. The ...self, ...from, and ...about ebooks make up a complete volume. They are published as free, internationally distributed ebooks in English, Spanish, and Catalan in .mobi (Kindle®) and ePub (iBook, iPad, most eReaders like sony®, fnac®, etc.) formats.

In the final stage of this open production process -which includes both the ebooks and the online material- the issues in the collection become available for low-cost, on-demand printing for those wishing to have a paper version and for public reference libraries in Catalonia and the rest of Spain and in international centres for architecture and culture.

The collection is testimony to the efforts of many people –a fractal map of involvement on the part of the editorial board and multiple other agents– whose only motivation is the desire to open up ideas, documentation, and research so as to foster debate. Their work does not rely on sponsorship or conventional advertising but rather on collaboration: companies produce original articles about their work, which constitute an alternative –and direct– form of expression.

[collection credits. 2017]

Félix Arranz, editor and director

Jaume Prat Ortells, Anna Bach, Paula Esquinas, Elisabet Mallafré, associated editors

Ferràn Figuerola, associated industrial editor

Josep Cusidó, associated industrial editor

Marta Ferrer, associated industrial editor

Birgit Zondler, associated indsutrial editor

Vicente Martínez-Cosentino, associated industrial editor

Irene Elorza, associated industrial editor

Jordi Vallverdú, associated industrial editor

editorial board

guest participants:

Santiago Alfonso, Eugeni Bach, Jordi Badía, Olga Felip, Borja Ferrater, Beth Galí, Jordi Ludevid, Fernando Marzá, Josep Lluís Mateo, Ariadna Perich, Xavier Torras.

industries board:

Cricursa · Lamp · Figueras · Geze · Cosentino · Pergo · Roca

institutional network

guest entities:

Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya (library) · Institut Ramon Llull · Arquitectes per l'Arquitectura · Associació Arquinfad del Foment de les Arts i el Disseny · Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona, UPC · LaSalle URL · ESARQ UIC · Catalunya Ràdio

scalae universal app >>> http://scalae.mobapp.at

[conversation]

Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta, RCR architects, talk with Félix Arranz, Jaume Prat, and Montse Arnau in a series of frank introspections that include their motivations and anecdotes about their shared personal and professional paths. Their families, the Vallès School of Architecture (ETSAV) during its «rural» stage, their early decisions when organizing the studio, the first competition they won, their trip to Japan... All these things are described, punctuated by simple observations about life and personal things both great and small among which the floating presence of their city makes itself felt: Olot, the right moment in time, and heightened senses that have been trained to capture the concrete aspects of existence so as to savour the exquisite sensation of knowing that you are part of everything.

we always saw our mothers and fathers at work...

The studio is one of our houses, a part of our lives. We’ve never felt that we work, because we’ve never understood what we do as work, but more like something we enjoy. Now we’re renovating the studio. We came to this studio three years ago and we haven’t finished yet. We’ve always managed to live with the building work.

The triangle that makes up RCR architects began with Ramon and Rafael, who went to secondary school together, and then moved to Barcelona for university, where they shared a flat. Then Ramón met Carme —even though she was from Olot, their paths didn’t cross until they were at the School of Architecture. Carme is a year younger than Rafael and Ramón, but she finished at the same time— we all presented our final projects on the same day. We did it together. We were at the Vallès School of Architecture (ETSAV).

We knew we’d be studying there because it’s where everyone from Girona goes, except people from Figueres, and then we liked it so much that we didn’t feel like changing. They were really good years. We’re the Vallès generation. We had teachers who were young at the time, who hadn’t studied at the Barcelona School of Architecture, and they made Vallès their battle ground. We had big dreams. We met all those people when we were the right age… They asked us to build things with our hands. We started by building cabins, making the overhangs from straw, and we built paper towers. It was unforgettable. Our teachers were only just starting out too, they were around thirty, and they were really keen.

We didn’t have any fixed ideas when we started. We just wanted to do architecture… The school was in the middle of nowhere, and getting there was an odyssey. It wasn’t anything like what you imagine a university to be: the buildings were like huts, but really well-built ones. The atmosphere wasn’t like a university either; it was more domestic, you felt a bit outside of all that.

Carme can’t remember when she decided to study architecture. She was sure she wanted to do something she liked and which she could do her whole life, something creative, but she didn’t have any set ideas, and there was something about architecture that set it aside from more artistic disciplines like painting or sculpture.

Rafael’s father was a bricklayer, he built houses, so Rafael had a very early relationship with construction, because he helped his father during the summer. He liked construction and the way to stay involved in it was to study architecture.

Ramón had always been into making things: building little huts with mortar, drawing... If he was going to study anything, it had to be architecture. Or nothing.

All three of us are the only ones in our respective families who are involved in architecture. We all come from working-class families and we always saw our mothers and fathers at work.

even at university our projects were in line with one another’s...

We presented very unusual end-of-degree projects, because we were the first to design and talk about landscape architecture. We were already using that term. Rafael and Ramon chose to specialize in urbanism which, with Enric Batlle teaching it, was more landscape-oriented. Carme specalized in composition. Absolutely nothing in Ramon’s project was constructed, and he began to worry when they asked him where the architecture was. It wasn’t so evident back then. The landscape. By adding and removing the little bits and pieces that make it up, the whole becomes quite complex…

What is clear is that it was an area that really appealed to us and we learnt a lot. The way teaching is organized means that people can’t capture work on different scales. When we finished university we were pretty clear that it was all the same thing, but that you needed to use different instruments depending on the scale. This was an incipient feature of our end-of-degree projects, but we’ve developed it much further.

We were brought together by the context of the Vallès school, where urbanism and building projects were both very much part of the reality at that time. There wasn’t a real hierarchy: everyone wanted their subject to be equal to the others’. It was a much more integrated way of teaching. We had a global vision even before we started designing our first house. And that’s because it was defined by all the other disciplines: urbanism, landscape, even structures.

Carme’s project, which was about composition, was in line with ours. She designed a micro hydroelectric power station. The project had to do with her father, who had always had a workshop where he came up with inventions and worked on electric things... nowadays we’d call them apps, although we don’t really know what to call them... apps for microhydro. And the fact that her project involved water was lovely. Really suggestive... There’s a special attraction to water... It can be read in so many ways, it’s so magical in terms of all its states and components, and it has that powerful attraction to it... so, in a way, we suppose that the landscape, and Carme’s house, and the attraction of water... She drew it all together and made an artefact with water in the landscape. Something inventive.

For our parents, an architect was something different to what we wanted to be. They never said anything, but they understood that we were doing something quite different to what they thought architects did. Anyway, they’re happy and proud of us.

what we need here is a table...

We’ve moved around a lot. Always. We finished university around 1987. In 1988 we started work and in 1990 we went to Japan. When we came back from Japan, we said to ourselves: «what we need here is a table».

So we made a big table. For the three of us. We share it. A lot of dialogue has taken place there, because we had never worked at other studios: when we finished university we came straight to Olot.

We had big dreams, and we became architects by talking to each other. It was our intention to always spend a large part of our time together talking, because it was the way we ended up making decisions. It might have seemed that we moved slowly, that working like this took us longer, but we don’t think that’s the case. In a way, this investment we made in our conversations translated into the thread that has run through all our work. Maybe now is the first time we’ve set about understanding things more from the point of view of structure. We didn’t work like that initially.

We never agreed on the principles we’d work by. We even started out as three independent architects, and we worked like that for five years, each of us with a third of everything, which is a pretty hard to divide by. Then we switched to joint ownership, which lasted for another five years, after which we formed a limited company, which is how we’ve worked ever since. That’s the business side of things. Conceptually speaking, we’ve never wanted to put many conditions on how we do things, even now. We didn’t want to give ourselves huge salaries, support a hefty infrastructure, or pay high rent... Everything was about being able to dedicate ourselves to architecture, to be able to realize this dream we had.

Ramón and Carme had it easier. Rafael was lucky to have been in the same relationship since finishing high school, with (someone) a wonderful woman who lived through all the hard work. That helped. In a way there were four of us.

We didn’t talk consciously about any particular parameters, although there was one thing we said explicitly: freedom. We’ve always been concerned with being free. Over the years you realize that you’re doing things on a whim, to follow dream, and sometimes these things make you lose your freedom. It’s a contradictory process. We used freedom, as far as possible, to choose a job. When we got the job, we threw ourselves in head first. That’s been our only constant.

Our studio is totally unlike Barcelona studios or those from any other city. We’ve never had architecture students here. We’ve had to put a studio together in a genuine fashion. We’ve never been influenced by anything around us because it wouldn’t have been of any use. We haven’t even asked ourselves if we should, because we’ve always done whatever we thought was best.

From this point of view, it’s all been very genuine. Right up to the present. We were worried about being trapped by a certain type of project precisely because we had returned to Olot. We said no to developers who offered us work. We took part in a national lighthouse competition and we won. That was in 1988. Of the 300 proposals, they chose ours. That’s how we started.

we’ve never been very erudite...

The first job we had was typical: fixing up a friend’s house. And we realized it really wasn’t the way we wanted to go. We won the lighthouse competition, and then another strange thing happened, which was that the first year we were working in Olot, the FAD prizes opened up to the whole of Catalonia. They started off in Barcelona. Now they take in the whole of Spain and Portugal. When we were still at university, we designed a refit of a shop, we presented it for the FAD awards, and it was selected. As a finalist. We ran to Rafael’s house. Literally ran. We still remember how happy we were that our shop had been selected. We thought that if we could win a national competition and get into the FAD prizes from here in Olot, then we could definitely work here permanently.

The first project we really saw ourselves in was the access pavilion to la Fageda d’en Jordà, the lowest beech forest in Catalonia. It was a project we made our own. A piece as small as that, and yet there’s so much reflection... if buildings had to have a base, middle, and top section... well, it’s all there! And its presence, without making a kiosk out of it... and its proportions, its elegance... it’s all condensed into a piece which is little more than a gate. Proportion, elegance... those are the words for us. They’re what we’re conscious of.

The Margarita house, which we made earlier, owes a debt to the Vallès school. The Margarita house sums up what we learned there. It’s very significant, and over time it has become even more so, because it explains lots of things that were important. We value it a lot now. It’s a really complex house, and all the main ingredients of our work are already there. It has all the ingredients that separate us from the school.

The access pavilion to la Fageda d’en Jordà is our world.

We’d say it’s an intuitive world because we think we’ve never really been erudite types. Not even in terms of our influences, as is so common nowadays. We’ve never left that moment in time. It wasn’t such a visually powerful time as the one we’re in now. It was more complex... we didn’t know what kind of chemistry it would end up generating.

Going to the Vallès school meant that there weren’t such powerful influences on us. Our teachers were good people, and they were really nice, but they weren’t particularly well-known. And that was an advantage. We were free of language... What we took away with us were concepts.

What we do is more about being able to learn from anything and everything. It’s not that you have to learn from such-and-such a person who knows so much more than you. It depends more on how you look at things. You can learn what’s good and what’s bad, and you can even learn what hasn’t been made well just by asking yourself why it’s badly made. Our learning process hasn’t been particularly academic, full of references, or about digesting things. No. It’s been more about learning from different kinds of input, from our own experiences as people, from our ways of being, of reacting in a certain way using the knowledge we have. An evolution. We don’t have any father figures.

finding a fork was very difficult...

Japan was an exceptional experience. It really left its mark on us, although we don’t particularly understand the process. The trip came out of the lighthouse competition that we won, which was published and led to us being invited to take part in another competition, this time for a commercial area on a Japanese island, against an American team. It was just the two teams. We were told we’d won and were invited to go there. That was in 1990. Japan was booming –the recession there began later and is still going on. We got there at the asymptote. We were also at a stage when we absorbed a lot.

Rafael went back fifteen years later, and that Japan had gone. He returned with high hopes, but no. That first time was exceptional, because of what we were like and because of the way the country was. Rafael wasn’t happy about the fact that, back then, it had been hard to find a fork, but fifteen years later it was hard to find chopsticks. We got to Japan and we couldn’t eat! It was another world. The spaces, people’s sensibility. Everything. The ways people walked. The shadows. We got so much out of it. Things that are still really a part of us... It was incredibly exciting!

Thanks to a friend Ramón had made while doing his master’s in landscaping in Barcelona, and who came with us, we got the chance to go to a monastery, as this friend had another friend who was a monk. The place wasn’t for tourists. We went, and it was very special. They let us in and put us in one of those cells... It was a small, closed space, and the next day they opened it up into this immense one... we can still see it. At night, we were enclosed in a small space... and in the morning, when we got up for breakfast (we’d already been up in the middle of the night for matins and chanting, even though it was freezing), they opened everything up, all the cells, which were interconnected... bang, bang, bang... one long row! It was like spring. An explosion. We’ve got a photo of it. When we see it, we still get really excited. And the sinks and latrines were just a channel!

Carme and Ramón have been back twice more. Once they went to see Tadao Ando’s work. Lots of Tadao Ando’s work. The second time we had small exhibition in Tokyo, and we spent a few days there. But we didn’t explore too much. We didn’t try to repeat that memory...

Rafael tried to. He got back in touch with the person who had helped us during the first trip and asked him to be taken to certain special sites that involved travelling miles and miles. But it was nothing like that first experience...

Ramón, on the other hand, went back a couple of years ago, and had many of the same feelings as the first time. It was partly because he was there at the same time as Hisao Suzuki, who took him back to the area we had been to, where Suzuki’s family was also from. Even though there’s more tourism there now, Ramón was still able to relive some of that first experience. He felt once more that he was in a very special culture.

we like to stay fresh...

We read a lot. Reading has always been one of our sources. Reading everything. Lots of art... books to look at and books to read. A bit of everything. Cookbooks, too. We like them.

We like cooking real food. We keep things as natural as possible, with almost no preparation. We grow things. Going to a supermarket doesn’t even cross our minds. We eat pretty well. The day before yesterday Carme brought us some saffron milk cup wild mushrooms... we loved them, they were amazing. We’re lucky to be able to get our hands on unprocessed food. We hardly ever use sauces. Sometimes we cook things in a Chinese steamer, sometimes we don’t cook them at all. We’re really not into sauces. We hardly ever fry things. Boiling. Or grilling. Always. There aren’t any arguments over that. We have breakfast together on Saturdays. It’s usually sausages and bread with tomatoes. We call it suca-suca. It’s something Carme’s father invented, grated tomato with olive oil, and we all dip our bread into the same dish of it. And we add oil and more oil to it. Good oil. We hardly touch the salt. Or pepper or garlic. We like savoury food. Never cakes or pastries. Except Carme: bread with butter and jam. Every day! It’s funny to be talking about this, because we haven’t done so for a long time.

From our very early days, all the things we’ve done have been at a certain time. We feel there’s a limit to everything we do. That’s the way we want it. We’re really clear on that. When you’re fifty you don’t want to be doing what you did when you were thirty. Your mind is one thing... your body is another. This path is life. We’ve always been clear on that. We can look back on it. We don’t know if we’ve done particularly well. We’ve done a lot of things, and we’ve thought a lot. It’s good to look at what we’ve done, because we can’t stop. We don’t recreate ourselves. We like to stay fresh. Those times were really great. If you have a lot of experience when you’re young, they say it makes you lose your hopes and dreams. Our experience may have made us lose the hopes and dreams we had when we were younger. But it’s brought wonderful things with it. The hopes and dreams we have now are more thought-out, not naive like before. They’re more nuanced. When we won the FAD award that time we talked about, the way we felt about that recognition... we’ve never felt that again. And plenty of more important things have happened to us since. But it’s not a question of how important things here, but about the time when they happen. Like Japan. It was to do with the moment. If things happen at particular moments the experience is more transcendent. Things have to happen when the time is right.

[nuances]

In a second encounter that aimed to delve deeper into particular aspects of the RCR studio, the conversation turned to the relationship that Rafael, Carme, and Ramón establish with a select list of materials and specific instruments, both during planning and in the construction of both landscape and architecture. The city of Olot and the Garrotxa region, their relationship with craftsmanship, their strategies for avoiding the automatic nature of convention, and the usefulness of conversation are the topics that predominate both encounters with these three architects, throwing into clear relief their painstakingly calibrated determination: «Reason and rationality form part of the conception of the world that has separated us from nature. Architecture needs to transcend this and rebuild that relationship». The commitment of the three architects from Olot to reconnecting life and culture has led them to expand their peculiar arsenal of resources by starting the BUNKA Foundation and the LAB·A summer workshops, the participants in which end up «working with us. The experience has become part of their lives (...) it’s a way of exercising complex thought. We live in a world of layers. And that's the way we need to think».

fundamental principles: roots and wings...

Olot is our home. We’ve always had our feet on the ground, here in our hometown. Our minds wander off, exploring, coming up with new ideas, but our feet are rooted here. Roots and wings.

We’re not particularly involved in the social or cultural life of Olot. We haven’t taken part in debates or associations, we don’t go to the theatre… we only get involved if, by chance, we find out about something that interests us, then we go. It’s that simple. From home to work and back again. We experience the essence of the city, but from a neutral position, without taking sides or getting too involved. This has given us enormous freedom. Olot is easy to live in. Although it’s nothing special, architectonically speaking, it has all the qualities you would want when you think of somewhere to live. Everything is close. The way you move about the city isn’t bad. But we’re very critical. If only we could make our dreams come true…

When we talk about Olot we’re talking about family, too. We went to the Vallès School because that’s where we were allocated places to study, because of where we were from. The link was the studio. The place where we worked lay outside the traditional framework, and that really brought us together. Our restlessness was what drove us... We were free spirits. All this has meant that there haven’t been any serious influences on our work. We aren’t erudite. That’s not something that interests us. It’s not something we like. We like experimenting with the process of our own lives. We don’t live through theory, we live through experience. Our families have always been close to us. Our surroundings are very special, very domestic, very enclosed. Olot is not a big city. But it’s comfortable. We’ve been more affected by our professional growth and the responsibility that has come with it than by the city.

The structure of the hut-like buildings at the Vallès School and the way we moved around there influenced us a lot. The covered walkways, the relationship with the forest... the experience inside and out was very different. We didn’t even have to think about it. We just absorbed it. It’s exactly the same with Olot. It has soaked into us, become part of us, given us something. It’s chemical.

If there’s any meaning to life it’s about giving it a certain direction. Architecture has done that for us. And it’s taken us beyond itself. We’ve thrown our passion, our love, all our effort into it. And all the while, we’ve been surrounded by this place, sheltered by it. It has focused our discussion.

Independence is a criterion that we have used in all our relationships, and it’s meant that we’ve had to say no to a lot of things. Along with the fact that we don’t have time for institutional relationships or collective ones… Because architecture is our vital project. Architecture without adjectives. Just architecture.

processes: authenticity without artifice...

We’re interested in making architecture that is as authentic as possible. We’ve always shied away from cladding. When we’ve gone to the extreme of using steel it’s because you can use it for absolutely everything: from the structure to the flooring and fittings. Authenticity without artifice. We’ve also shied away from standardized materials. We like roughness, we like texture. Things you can touch. We like materials that take hold of you. Inert materials that form inertial spaces. When you visit them the experience makes you truly feel these spaces. The way we perceive space has to do with memory. With personal baggage.

From the outset we’ve acted as a result of our experience with the material. We started with stone. Our first work used 12 cm Salamanca stone. Heavy stuff, with load-bearing capacity. When we experimented with other things, we weren’t satisfied and we gave up on them, because we didn’t feel that they were going to work. We’ve never sought out industrialized processes. In big cities, you need industry. In Olot, it’s not really necessary. Craftspeople are more important here. The possibility of building things has opened us up more to handcrafted structures than to building things in series. This is really contemporary. These days, lots of people offer more customized, individual things.

We’ve named a lot of our houses after the jobs of those who live in them. We started with the House of the Blacksmith and the Hairdresser. It was really important that they did the jobs they did. He had to make part of the house himself, and she had her business there. It was conceived expressly for them. We would have lived in all the houses that we’ve built. We made them as though they were for ourselves. We took all the conditions we were given onboard, but we worked with them in such a way that the houses are livable. In our hearts, we know what it’s like to live in those houses. That’s our job. It’s like an orchestra conductor who reads a score and can hear how it will sound. We see the plans and can feel what the whole thing will be like.

The tools we use to communicate are important. Each tool provides us with different information. We work to know what kinds of spaces we can imagine, and to produce material that can be communicated. We don’t do anything alone. We come up with ideas, but then we have to convince the client that it’s the right thing, then the builder, the technicians… A drawing has to communicate to the maximum. And it has to communicate on the same wavelength as the spaces we are making. We want everything to be on the same wavelength. Drawing, between the three of us, isn’t that important. We talk a lot. The most substantial part of the relationship between us is, and has always been, words.

results: the way a person relates to space...

We use a limited list of materials. It’s a conscious decision. Using only a few materials gives us a clarity and unity that is a value of ours. If the material isn’t screaming out at you, then space will appear. We don’t like closed spaces. We like air, voids, energy. Causing unexpected relationships. Generating new perceptions.

Architecture was born as a shelter against climate conditions. But it’s gone too far. We only believe in regulating climate conditions up to a point. We don’t want to be inside a cell. We’re not really indoors people. Whenever we can, whenever the programme allows, we want the interior to be an exterior, either literally so, or for it to feel as though it is.

We do architecture through sensations. The studio, which has a really high ceiling, becomes dark at night. We work the way people have always worked: feeling time passing, day becoming night. When it rains, the drops all but fall on our heads. For much of the history of architecture the interior and the exterior have been separate, as though man were outside the boundaries of nature. We don’t want that. We want to bring them together. Our architecture is not to do with the object. That’s what rationalism was all about. Our architecture is woven from relationships. We feel the need to return to nature. The limits of architecture are discontinuous, space dissolves and flows. We believe that rationalism is coming to an end. We’re in a state of flux. Reason and rationality form part of the conception of the world that has separated us from nature. Architecture needs to transcend this and rebuild that relationship.

It’s a lot to ask. We’re asking people to change mentally. For them to feel that winter is winter and wear more layers of clothing, rather than relying on heating. People aren’t too enthusiastic about that. The first buildings we designed didn’t have air conditioning. And we haven’t been working for all that long. Now it seems that you can’t make anything without air conditioning. We shouldn’t separate ourselves from our place of origin. We need to be on the same wavelength as the environment. We are an implicit part of it. We disturb the environment, we experience it, we feel it, we interact with it... You need to be up to that challenge. Architecture transmits feelings, not just comfort. The crisis we are going through now is the result of this age coming to an end. The world to come has to be better.

The challenge is how to extrapolate this, and how to make it suitable for a large number of people. The really hard part is how to make it accessible for everyone. We’re aware that it’s hard to change the scale things happen on and get them to reach lots of people. But the way things were before was too simple. If we propose spaces that relate to nature more honestly, things will be harder for us. Finding an individual client who accepts it is easier.

We need to understand all of this as a value that people have forgotten, and our intention is for it to be reborn. But we want to avoid labels that automate it all: sustainability, ecology... We don’t want certifications!

everything else: we want to show people things...

Now we believe we can bring something to the city of Olot. That’s why we started the BUNKA Foundation and the LAB·A summer workshop. The workshop is rather like our experience of the Vallès School. It came about naturally. We want to bring our world together on a larger scale. We think we can transmit our world in a way that goes beyond the world of magazines and publications. We think we can create hope. For the students, the workshop is a total immersion. They come to Olot, to our studio, to see us and our people. We had even thought about it lasting longer. Otherwise there’s no way of them really truly experiencing what it is. A month isn’t a lot of time, but even so, because they’re fully immersed in our environment, it works. People who take part in it experience a lot of things. Now we have people who have come back after spending a week at home wrapping things up. They’re working with us now. The experience has become part of their lives. We like that. We want to show people things. Show them an attitude, a way of doing things... The people who collaborate with us are like a family. They spend a lot of time together, both inside and outside the studio.

The workshop also functions as a research space. Our interlocutors are final-year students, or architects. Otherwise there’s no dialogue. It’s also good for exercising complex thought. We live in a world of layers. And that’s the way we need to think. That’s why we mix our activities with other disciplines that can enrich them.

We like bringing architecture closer to the city of Olot. Architecture is very endogamic. It’s a really closed world. We want to break that barrier. People aren’t aware of this, but life happens in spaces that are architecture, or at least should be. They often reject this idea because they’re biased. We even put forward programmes that are aimed at children. They’re the bottom line. Programmes, games... We’re more open now. In every sense. We take people from other sectors to visit our work... When there’s a local holiday, we open our studio up to the city, we explain it to kids, to families...

The other day, the people from our studio organized a calçotada [a traditional Catalan gathering in which leek-shaped sweet onions are roasted on an open fire then peeled and served with sauces]. It made us feel very proud to see such different people gathered around the same table like that... people whose average age was less than thirty. We started with people from here, and now there are people from all over the world. It’s so enriching! Realizing that twenty-five years ago we set off along a path and the result has been this communion of people makes us feel really good.

[expression]

By identifying some of the expressive components of their day-to-day lives, the members of RCR architects offer up a sequence of images that form an invitation to journey into their minds and beyond, through the senses, crossing the thresholds of life, matter, relationships, and reflections. A handwritten relationship between texts, situations, and authors, a farm, an empty canvas that wanted to become architecture in its own right, the smiles that emerge from having a good time together in a fortuitous place, a map of this creative triumvirate’s personal universe, materials that are reminders or leftovers from projects, or the bottled air breathed by those who live in the water... all these episodes are equally important, and can take place in whatever order the reader decides, or however nature defines their drift.

[referencies]

This section contains twelve links to online references about the life and work of RCR architects. The first is a biographical profile (in Spanish) at scalae.net (1). This is followed by five recent works that are illustrative of their way of thinking and creating. The first of these is the tent they built for Les Cols restaurant, the most recent intervention in this space to date (2). The second is a meeting space in Mas del Vent, near Palamós, for the client as the Bell Lloc winery (3). The third is an office building on Plaça Europa in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat that brilliantly reinterprets the volumetric principles of the square it overlooks, converting them into a structural type (4). The fourth is the La Lira space in Ripoll, with J. Puigcorbé–the capital of the administrative district immediately south of Garrotxa, el Ripollès– which converted the space left by a ruined theater that had burnt down into an active void (5). The fifth is a crematorium that they are completing in Hofheide, Belgium, with Coussée & Goris Architecten (6). The seventh is an entrance to the Architecture Laboratory that is one of RCR’s three areas of activity, and which organizes the Summer Workshop in Olot (7). The eighth, Font d’Arquitectura, is RCR’s creative laboratory (8). The ninth is a conference given by Carme Pigem in French (9). The tenth is a programme for Televisión Española in Sant Cugat that explores RCR’s creative side (10). The eleventh is the website for the Bell-Lloc winery, a successful project that has become a point of reference for RCR (11). The twelfth is a series of six videos directed by Júlia de Balle but instigated by RCR, about various aspects of the studio, magnificently photographed and edited (12).

1: RCR architects profile at scalae.net

2: Tent for Les Cols restaurant, Olot, Girona

3: Mas del Vent, Palamós, Girona

4: Plaça Europa, l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona

5: La Lira space, Ripoll, Girona

6: Crematorium, Hofheide, Belgium

7: Laboratori d'Arquitectura LAB·A

8: Font d'Arquitectura

9: video, Conference given by Carme Pigem, les Architectures en ligne, MAMAC de Nice (fr)

10: video, RTVE "Tinc una idea" (cat)

11: video, Conference given by Carme Pigem, Citè de l'architecture & du Patrimonie (fr)

12: videos, RCR by Júlia de Balle

...: web Restaurant Les Cols

...: web Pavellons Les Cols

...: web Cellers Bell-Lloc

Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramón Vilalta have been architects since 1987 and have worked together since 1988, now under the name of RCR architects, from their hometown, Olot. They won the 2005 Premi Nacional de Cultura d’Arquitectura [National Architectural Culture Prize] given by the Generalitat de Catalunya [Government of Catalonia], the Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres de la Repúblique Française [Knights of the Order of Arts and Letters of the Republic of France] in 2008; were made honorary members of the American Institute of Architecture in 2010; won the International Prize at the 2011 Belgian Building Awards, and became honorary members of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2012.

Since 1989 they have been the consultant architects for the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park. Ramón Vilalta was a lecturer in urbanism and landscape architecture (1989–2001) and Carme Pigem in plans (1992–2004), and they have all written essays on architecture and landscape.

They have won various international competitions, the most recent of which were for the Camí Comtal Park in Barcelona, the Library of the Future and the New Media Centre in Waalse Krook, Belgium, the Soulages Museum in France, the Hofheide Crematorium in Belgium, and The Edge in Business Bay, Dubai.

The distinctions the studio has received include seven Foment de les Arts i el Disseny (FAD, Arts and Design Promotion) awards, and they have been finalists at the European Union’s Mies van der Rohe Awards three times.

Some of their award-winning work has been exhibited at different events (the most recent, Global Ends, at the Toto Gallery·Ma in Tokyo) and published as different monographs (the most recent were El Croquis, No. 115/116 (III), RCR Arquitectes 1999-2003, El Croquis No. 162 (IV), RCR Arquitectes 2003–2012; “Abstracción Poética [Poetic Abstraction]”, AV No. 137; El Croquis No. 138 (V), RCR Arquitectes 2003–2007; Los atributos de la naturaleza [The attributes of nature], RCR 3C Design, Korea., "RCR Aranda Pigem Vilalta Arquitectes. Entre la abstracción y la naturaleza", GG, Barcelona)

2017 Pritzker Prize

...Olot, tranquil houses and the universal continuum

by Félix Arranz and Jaume Prat

The basis for pantheism is the fusion of immanence and the material world, which is unique and always changing –with its moving atoms and vibration it is as alive as anything else around us. The list of pantheists* tends to be short, and shorter still that of pantheistic scientists, which includes –according to Wikipedia– researchers like Albert Einstein and Ludwig Boltzmann, writers who knew a little of the connection between body and soul, like D.H. Lawrence or Robinson Jeffers, or architects like Frank Lloyd Wright. And, quite possibly, it should also include these three architects from Olot, who, in their shared personal drifting and remarks give rise to an abstract fusion, an architecture motivated by understanding territory, landscape, and life as a single, immanent, absolute tale in which everything is connected: a universal continuum. The physical points of reference for RCR’s architecture are not on a human scale, but reach beyond the anthropomorphic to the enormity of nature. This return to the pantheistic, pre-Socratic world where man is nothing without nature gives their work a universal condition, taking it outside of time and space. As such, people perceive in it the invisible, atavistic energy of nature that takes over all human senses, and eventually shapes matter itself.

Reciprocally, their architecture tends to be stripped of the evidence and prejudice of conventional use, culture, and configuration, and so it appears to be strange, magical, and mysterious, immensely and immediately logical and epic, woven from nudges and winks and a very profound sense of humour. Given that this is how things are, anyone who is interested in inhabiting or decoding the power of this architecture must necessarily get to know its original source of inspiration, where it is from.

Let’s talk about Olot, then. Running parallel to almost the entire length of the Catalan coast is a small mountain range that mirrors it at a distance that ranges from nothing, when it stretches down into the sea forming cliffs, to about a dozen kilometres away... The kind of coastal architecture that is built along the strip of land between the shore and the mountains has been described as Catalan architecture, concealing and contaminating the architecture further inland, which is dark, shadowy, heavy, and material. An inner architecture of slow digestion, seen against the light, surrounded by still air that smells different. To the northeast is a region where beech trees grow at a lower altitude than anywhere else in the country. Where the light is softer, the shadows more tenuous and profound. Where it rains differently. Where people speak differently. Where the farms are different. This is the Garrotxa region, where RCR architects is from. Where they live. Where they work. It’s Olot.

Let’s talk about motivation: the closest thing to a manifesto that the RCRs have come up with to date has been a book called Les cases que no criden**. A book that returns to the land, that tries to bring about certain sensations. A book that aims to experience the site in terms of the volcanic rock that is used to build the farms that are examined and described in the book. But these three architects don’t live off nostalgia. Children of our times, they update, value, and reclaim these sensations so as to make them compatible (by growing, maturing, and criticizing them) with our way of life and project a transcendent meaning onto them. Tireless readers, they refuse to think of the stele in Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows*** as an evocation of a paradigm that is dead and buried. Their attitude towards the book is the same as that towards their own landscape: they understand it not as a rigid, museum-worthy thing through which to morbidly recreate oneself, but rather as something living to be learned from so that, once everything has been related, you can respectfully intervene in it. Mature it. Evolve it. Rewrite it, maybe. Something that enriches us physically, which can be applied directly to their architecture. The photographs by Pep Sau that illustrate the book speak of the identification of the territory of Garrotxa, Olot, with the matter-turned-energy that Junichiro Tanizaki makes us experience through his poetic prose and an architecture that, instead of revealing itself, necessarily fades away so that it can be mistaken for life itself and everything in it and the universal continuum.

FA and JP, May 2013

(*) A conception of the world according to which nature can be conceived of as the only true reality, the genuine conscience of the universe, which nothing is more transcendent than, as everything that exists is immanent.

(**) Les cases que no criden · Las casas silenciosas · Tranquil houses · La casa de Pagés al parc natural de la zona volcánica de la Garrotxa ISBN 9788439388043, RCR Aranda Pigem Vilalta Arquitectes, 2011 (Available in English)

(***) In Praise of Shadows, Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, Leete's Island Books,U.S. ISBN-13: 978-0918172020, 1977

...light reveals the space and the paces for RCR architects

by Ignasi Cusidó and Josep Cusidó

We have had the pleasure of working with the RCR architects studio architecture on 3 different occasions: for an "Hammershoi annd Dreyer” exhibition held at the Casa de la Caritat in Barcelona, for the Carpa de les Cols project, and for the casa Entremurs in Olot. In all 3 projects, light was used carefully to reveal the space.

In the Casa de la Caritat exhibition, light played a leading role. An intimate ambient lighting hinting at and establishing the space while blending with the lighting of the paintings themselves, encompassing viewers in a space designed to make them experience the feeling of solitude. The project, designed with Maurici Ginés, artec3 lighting designer, won the LAMP Lighting Solutions Awards first prize.

Lately, RCR architects often work only with primary structures. In the case of the casa Entremurs, this concept can also be seen. The stone party walls backfill in approximately 1 meter of distance to a wall of plates which can be considered a framed structure taken to the limit, practically reduced to nothing for the short distance between plates. Or it can even be considered a load-bearing lattice wall, to which light is associated from bottom to top, making the space seem larger than it really is, without losing the sense of intimacy, because a ceramic and wood roof is lighted, in dark and warm colors.

As for the Carpa de les Cols, there is also a single primary structure, which supports an EFTE roof, the struts of which are directly associated with the light. In this case, the light is overhead, indirect, and comes from LED lamps reflected on methacrylate diffusers in such a way as to set the repetitive pace of the structure and reveal the space according to the observer’s point of view, giving the impression of a cavernous space.

RCR usually work in conjunction with the lighting designer, who traduces and helps developing the architect’s intuitions about artificial light.

LAMP’s relationship with RCR architects goes beyond light itself, and in 2013, RCR arquitectes have been one of the 8 members of the panel of theLAMP Lighting Solutions Awards. Furthermore, we collaborate with the LAB·A CREATIVE LABORATORY workshop in Olot.

LAMP and RCR architects have worked, work and will always work hand in hand.

IC and JC, May 2013

(translation: spain alphatrad)

[notes]

[get involved]

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We welcome new articles, opinions, or comments on these conversations with RCR architects, their personal work, or their professional work as architects. Proposals* should be sent to ebooks@scalae.net -if accepted by the editorial board, texts will be published on the scalae.net site and may be included in the appropriate ...about volume of the scalae ebook collection.

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[subscriptions]

Why subscribe? You will automatically receive, free of charge, all the new issues and updates in the collection in the appropriate format for the device or app of your choice (iPod, iPhone, Android, Kindle®, ePub reader, iPad, tablets, notebook, or desktop). We have found the following apps and devices to be the most versatile: the Amazon Kindle®, the Kindle® apps for Windows, Apple OS X, Android, and Apple iOS, and the iBooks app for Apple iOS.

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[technical note]

This issue of the scalae architecture + architects international ebook collection is a “draft” version of the ...self volume on the architects RCR architects. Its Book ID is: scalae.net-rcr-self-draftENG-20130531-01. The issue became available online on 31 May 2013. In subsequent months, corrections and updates to the earlier content will be incorporated to produce the “ready” and “final” versions of the text. The “final” version will be available in print as a book for libraries and collectors. The ...about and ...from volumes on the same subject may also become available in coming months, and will be subject to the same revision process before the publication of the print version (please see the complete explanation of the collection for more information)

[net + fractal map]

The editors would like to thank the individuals and companies that were invited to sit on the editorial and industries boards of the scalae architecture + architects international ebook collection for their support, hard work, and suggestions. We are also grateful to the public bodies and institutions that were asked to participate through our institutional network. Their inspiration and generosity enabled us to launch the collection, polish the ideas that underlie it, perfect the processes used to create it, and hone the goals we share. Their help has made it possible for this issue to reach the hands of those who are interested in architecture and the agents that take part in the creation of it.

We would also like to thank Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta, and the staff at his studio, for the time and effort they have put into making this ebook a complete text that documents, in a comparative fashion, the approach and results of their professional life. This publication will also contribute to understanding how different generations of architects and the different agents involved in the many facets of what we call architecture approach and resolve architectural projects and works.

We are grateful for  Hisao Suzuki, David Cardelús, Pep Saui Emiliano Roia snapshots, which put a coherent finish touch to the graphic and documentary material in this book, as do the five works mentioned in the references that are included on scalae.net.

RCR architects would like to thank...

…to the photographers collaboration: D.Cardelús, E.Roia, H.Suzuki, P. Sau and patience of Felix Arranz and Jaume Prat...

We are grateful for the comments and contributions we have received from members of the fractal map, some of whom are listed below. These will undoubtedly nourish the upcoming “...about” and “...from” titles in this collection, the earliest versions of which are available at scalae.net:

...about Rafael Moneo: Ferran Figuerola -"escuchar a Moneo"- (esp)

...self Rafael Moneo 05: Sobre la propia manera de trabajar | On my way of working... (esp/eng)

...self Carlos Ferrater 03: projects on a small scale | proyectos en pequeña escala... (esp/eng)

...self Carlos Ferrater 04: a professional structure | una estructura profesional... (esp/eng)

...self Carlos Ferrater 05: the Stradivarius violin case | el estuche de un Stradivarius... (esp/eng)

...self Carlos Ferrater 06: when the precise material doesn’t exist | cuando no existe el material preciso... (esp/eng)

...self Carlos Ferrater 07: working in Barcelona | trabajar en Barcelona... (esp/eng)

At the same time, Jaume Prat has written a regular series of articles that aim to reveal how context, reviews, analysis, and criticism can be complementary rather than conflicting terms, in keeping with our hopes for this collection...

...Mickey Mouse at Pawson’s House (esp)

...las glosas Qataríes (esp)

…como un disco de Luís Cobos (esp)

...espacios erógenos (esp)

...Ladrillos requemados, olor a tierra o las cosas que entran por la piel -sobre el workshop de RCR Arquitectes en Olot- (esp)

Thank you to Apple and Amazon for including scalae ebooks as downloads in their respective shops.

Finally, we’d like to thank all the people who have supported the collection by reading and spreading the word: over 20,000 copies have now been downloaded through the iTunes and Kindle bookstores or through the free subscriptions system at archBIB.com. We are grateful to many of them for their efforts to help users who are not familiar with the technology in question to be able to read these ebooks. Below is a quick guide on how to read Scalae ebooks on different devices:

The scalae architecture + architects international ebook collection distributed by archBIB as mobi and ePub files can be read using a range of devices: Smartphones (Apple iPhone, Android, and Windows), tablets (Apple iPad, Android, and Windows), ebook readers (Kindle® and ePub readers), and computers (using Kindle® ePub reading apps).

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+The Kindle app can also be downloaded for iPhone and iPad, in which case download the mobi file version of the ebook.

+Android and Windows: using the Kindle app, in which case you need to download the mobi file,

+Android and Windows: using ePub reading apps, in which case downlaod the ePub file.

Computer options, all of which use ePub files:

+Adobe Digital Editions is the official (free) application

+ Mozilla Firefox add-on which allows you to read ePub files directly from the browser

+ Sony ereader

There is also a Kindle app for computers, in which case download the mobi file format of the ebook.

Barcelona, march 2017

[podcast scalae]

(spanish) Una gran mayoría de las conversaciones con Félix Arranz, materia prima de los documentos de arquitectura scalae, son accesibles, se pueden escuchar, si dispone de alún aparato que reproduzca archivos mp3. Se emiten, como "podcast scalae", desde scalae.net o la app de scalae y pueden ser atendidas desde el ordenador, la computadora o el teléfono celular (smartphone). Cada una de las conversaciones tiene una duracción aproximada de una hora. http://scalae.net/podcasts

[collection catalogue]

published ebooks...

· ebook "Oriol Bohigas ...by himself"

· ebook "Josep Camps y Olga Felip ...by themselves"

· ebook "Josep Ferrando ...by himself"

· ebook "Anna y Eugeni Bach ...by themselves"

· ebook "RCR arquitectos ...by themselves"

· ebook "From... Jaume Prat Ortells"

· ebook "Álvaro Siza Vieira ...by himself"

· ebook "Debate BIA-AR 2014 principios"

download >>> scalae.net · archBIB.com · itunes · amazon

[copyright]

The creative universe shared by Catalan architects Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta is the focus of this, the fifth volume in the scalae architecture + architects international ebook collection. "RCR architects by themselves" is a detailed examination of the principles that underlie the studio's work, one that interweaves descriptions of the region the three architects are from, La Garrotxa, with their very specific take on craftsmanship, nature and the universal. Their comments, ideas and projects reveal the genuine nature of what is one of the most significant Catalan architectural studios of our time. This book illustrates and celebrates the deliberately timeless architecture that earned them the 2017 Pritzker prize.

Digital copies of the scalae architecture + architects international ebook collection are free, so sales of them are not permitted. If you wish to show us your gratitude for the reading, please consider making a contribution to the Arquitectes Sense Fronteres NGO and its cooperative programs.

(cc) 2017 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa). You may not use this work or any work derived from it for commercial purposes. Any resulting work may only be distributed under a license identical to this one.

v. 2.0 RCR ENG

Table of Contents

SCALAE | RCR architects | ...by themselves

[index]

[issue credits. updated 2017]

[scalae international ebook collection]

[collection credits. 2017]

humans, shoes, by RCR arquitectes

[conversation]

we always saw our mothers and fathers at work...

even at university our projects were in line with one another’s...

what we need here is a table...

we’ve never been very erudite...

finding a fork was very difficult...

we like to stay fresh...

humans, hands, by RCR architects

humans, Japan, by RCR architects

[nuances]

fundamental principles: roots and wings...

processes: authenticity without artifice...

results: the way a person relates to space...

everything else: we want to show people things...

humans, RCR, by Hisao Suzuki

humans, LAB·A, by Emiliano Roia

[expression]

Country house at la Garrotxa

Places and times

Man and woman cloud

Shared Creativity Universe

Pierre Soulages

Les Cols Tent

Access pavilion at Ullastret

House for an architect, Gant

International Laboratori of Architecture and Landscape

RCR Fish

[referencies]

QRs

ref: Carpa Les Cols, Hisao Suzuki

ref: Public space, Teatre La Lira, Hisao Suzuki

ref: Plaçça Europa 31, David Cardelus

ref: Mas del Vent, Hisao Suzuki

ref: Crematori de Hofheide, with Coussée & Goris Architecten

...Olot, tranquil houses and the universal continuum

...light reveals the space and the paces for RCR architects

[notes]

[net + fractal map]

humans, farm, by Pep Sau

[podcast scalae]

[collection catalogue]

[copyright]