The young architects Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga have won this year’s Mies van der Rohe Award. A visit to a Spanish office that transcends national borders
If you don’t know the exact address of Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga, you will probably never find their office. No sign on Calle Bailén in Barcelona’s Eixample gives any indication. Unlike third-class German architecture firms that advertise with monstrous signs, the winners of this year’s Mies van der Rohe Award are decidedly reserved. The information provided by the concierge, who actually still exists here, is helpful: second floor, second door on the left. This information is important, as there is no office sign on this floor either. Fortunately, the information is correct, and at the door, the heat-stricken guest is immediately asked for his drinks, which is completely unusual by Spanish standards.
In fact, the young Barozzi Veiga office is decidedly un-Spanish, or rather un-Catalan. Both Fabrizio Barozzi, born in 1976 in Italy, and Alberto Veiga, born in 1973 in Galicia, may feel at home in the metropolis of Barcelona, but they are still unfamiliar with Catalan culture. Barozzi openly admits that after eleven years of living in Barcelona, they still don’t speak Catalan, although as a rule, no foreigner can get off the ground professionally without a command of the language.
And how did the unusual partnership between a young architect from the city of longing, Venice, and a slightly older architect from the medieval pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela come about? Fabrizio Barozzi explains that 14 years ago he escaped the traditional academic architectural training in Venice to learn the craft of architecture in Spain. As chance would have it, the two met in Seville, Andalusia, where they were given the opportunity to work on projects in Spain in the renowned office of Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra. Alberto Veiga, however, had a completely different background, as his training at the University of Navarra was much more practice-oriented and he was subsequently offered a position with Patxi Mangado in Pamplona.
From the very beginning, the two architects worked on large, significant projects – the new Congress Palace for Seville, the conversion of the venerable Palacio San Telmo into the Andalusian seat of government, and finally the redesign of the harbor front in Vigo, Galicia. After the relatively short intermezzo in the office of Vázquez Consuegra, where Barozzi and Veiga learned the know-how for independent work, came the “important competitions in Spain”. First, in 2004, they won a competition for social housing in Úbeda, Andalusia, and a short time later for a concert and congress hall in Águilas with the royal name “Infanta Doña Elena”. This was at a time when mayors of small towns, such as the tourist stronghold of Águilas on the Costa Cálida, were keen to emulate the Bilbao effect.
It can be taken for granted that the Mies van der Rohe Award has boosted Barozzi Veiga’s international career. It is striking that their current projects are located exclusively in Switzerland and South Tyrol. Maquettes and designs for current projects can be found everywhere in the office: the music school in Bruneck in northern Italy, the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, the Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur and the Zurich Tanzhaus. All of the projects are characterized by a design approach that already formed the basis of the Szczecin Philharmonic Hall: the intention – according to Fabrizio Barozzi – is to condense striking characteristics of the urban context in a contemporary form. And finally, which is a matter of course for many Barcelona architects, to expand and enhance the public space: “We are convinced that in our cities we should pay greater attention to the relationship between the building and the urban space – not just the buildings.”
Read more in Baumeister 8/2015
