Jordi Garcés, Daria de Seta and Anna Bonet, associated since 2011, now start out on a new stage of international tenders and works that integrates and continues the Jordi Garcés’s already consolidated trajectory (Picasso Museum, Vall d’Hebron Olympic Pavilio, Hotel Plaza in Barcelona, Museum of Art of Navarre, Museum of Science and the Cosmos of Tenerife, among others).
Winners of the international tender for The Priory Site in Pully, Lausanne, the Palace of Justice in Strasbourg, the Syracuse Maritime Station and a residential complex in Tours, in recent years they have enjoyed considerable success among critics. The project for Three metro stations on Line 9 in Barcelona, was at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, then at the Fad Award 2016, and the project for the Arranz Bravo Painting Studio received a mention of honour from the jury and the Opinion Award at the FAD Awards 2014.
These more recent works are the result of a new professional complementarity from both the generational and the cultural point of view, and are capable of interpreting the conceptual, technical and project management challenges of our present.
It seems that it has never been so necessary to reflect on the relationship we establish with the places we live in as at this historical time. Climate crisis, phenomena of great social transformation, real estate bubbles, large speculative disasters that have altered the landscape and the oro-hydrographic ecosystem are just some of the signs that architecture is becoming more and more a mandatory testbed for new, more sustainable policies.
These considerations are the basis of three fundamental principles that characterise our approach to the project.
-Attention to the place
An architectural project is intended as a process guided by the character of the place (a mixture of society, territory, landscape, culture, environment), an opportunity to read and reinterpret the existing, whether it be natural or anthropised, urban or rural, central or peripheral, historical heritage or abandoned area. The transformation of the site and its atmosphere produced by architectural intervention has become a precious opportunity to re-read and then adapt and enhance the contextual riches.
-Dialogue between old and new
Far from an interpretation of the project as a conservative process, we believe that the look we project on the world with our work must be the result of a contemporary sensibility capable of conversing with the present, with those who use it today. The project must propose solutions that speak the language of those who live there, solutions that are images of our time. Adding a piece of honesty to the mosaic of the history of places requires a flight from historicism, mimicry, and instead operation in a contemporary key.
-What is truly needed?
We believe it is very important to answer this question before starting to design solutions. We have long been convinced that in order to achieve the best project, the solutions with the greatest expressive and conceptual impact, it is essential to understand what is strictly necessary, not only in terms of reducing impacts and costs, but above all in terms of rigour and accuracy in the analysis of existing needs and qualities; an ethical way to relate through our profession to the world in which we live and to search for new forms of beauty.
