Eva Prats; Ricardo Flores
The work of Flores & Prats has the same layered quality as their beautiful drawings. In two buildings of Flores & Prats in Palma de Mallorca, Casa Balaguer and the Museu dels Molins we witnessed the rich vocabulary of their architectural language. The work is rigorous and precise but also feels loose and organic, designed to fit into existing contexts. These contexts might be a new window or doorway in a wall, a cut in an existing floor or roof to allow movement or light, the transformation of a left-over space into an intimate public space. Their structural know-how, their knowledge of materials produces a wonderful collage of new and old. The housing project in Terrassa, near Barcelona, Edificio 111, has a social and spatial complexity which enriches the lives of the occupants with the same intention of making a loose organism as a framework for living.
The exhibit in this Biennale represents the new Sala Beckett theatre in Barcelona, which occupies an existing abandoned building once a social worker’s club. A hole in the roof of the existing semi-derelict building revealed an opportunity to allow the ’liquid light’ to leak into the interior. The exhibit traps light within the sinuous form and takes the visitor on a journey of discovery.
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