FLORES & PRATS, ARCHS is an architecture studio based in Barcelona.
Established in 1998 by Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats, Flores & Prats combine design and constructive practice with intense academic activity. After their experience at Enric Miralles’ studio, Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats developed a career where research is always linked to the responsibility to make and build, giving importance to the possibilities of public interpretations and critical views that the built work reveals as part of this research process.
Their projects, most of which are the result of open competitions, have investigated fields such as rehabilitation and reuse of abandoned or ruined constructions, social housing and its capacity to build community, or urban public spaces with neighbourhood participation. The office has also developed mobile or portable projects, has experimented with the use of film to document architecture, and with menus of edible architecture such as those developed for the exhibitions of its work in Barcelona and Copenhagen.
AWARDS
The work of Flores & Prats has been widely awarded, published and exhibited. They have been part of the Emerging Offices Wallpaper Directory in 2007, won the Grand Prize for the Best Architectural Work of the Royal Academy of Arts in London 2009 for the rehabilitation project Mills Museum in Palma de Mallorca, and the International Prize Dedalo Minosse in Vicenza 2011 for the New Microsoft Campus in Milan. Their work has been exhibited at La Biennale di Venezia in 2012, 2014, 2016, in 2018 with a double contribution: ‘Liquid Light’ at the main exhibition in the Corderie dell’Arsenale (a finalist at the 2019 FAD Awards), and ‘The Morning Chapel’ at the Vatican Pavilion, and in 2023 with ‘Emotional Heritage’ as part of the section ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ of ‘The Laboratory of the Future’. They have been nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Prize in 2005, 2015, 2016 and 2017.
For the Cultural Centre Casal Balaguer, they were a finalist in the Mallorca Architecture Awards in the Rehabilitation Category in 2017 and awarded the City of Palma Prize of Architecture in 2018. For this project, Eva Prats was shortlisted for Architect of the Year at the 2019 Women in Architecture awards.
Sala Beckett / International Drama Workshop received the Barcelona City Prize in 2016, in 2017 was a finalist for the FAD Architecture Prize, ENOR Architecture Prize, and Beazley Designs of the Year at the Design Museum in London, and in 2019 was the winner of The Architectural Review ‘New into old’ awards.
Flores & Prats have received a special mention in the National Architecture awards for Spain and been named the Architects of the Year in the 2018 AD Awards.
ACADEMIC ACTIVITY
Eva Prats is currently Professor at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio. Both partners are Associate Professors at the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona ETSAB-UPC, and have recently been Guest Professors at ETH Zürich (2019-2021), and Geddes Visiting Fellows at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (2021). Since 1998 they have directed workshops and lectured in Schools of Architecture, Museums and other Cultural Institutions of Spain and countries of Europe, Asia, Australia and America; the most recent and inspiring examples include ‘Construir Comunidades’ (2021) rehabilitation and reuse at the Prat Vermell industrial settlement, and ‘Measuring Villa Adriana’ (2022, 2023) study trips to Rome and Villa Adriana to draw and learn from the ruins.
They participate internationally in academic cultural events, most recently in the Works + Words Biennale in Copenhagen (2019 and 2022), Bienal de Arquitetura de São Paulo (2019), and as keynote speakers of the Bucharest Triennale (2019). They have taken part in congresses such as the Ultzama Campus 2017, IX Congress DO.CO.MO.MO Iberian (2016), and have been part of juries for the Competition for the new building of the Technical School of Architecture (ETSAE) in Cartagena (2017), III Ibero-American Biennial of Academic Architecture in Cuenca (2017), Islands of Arts (IOA) Venice (2016), FAD International Awards 2013, XVIII Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Quito (2012), and the VIII AJAC Awards Competition for Young Architects (2012).
They have been Invited Professors at the Arizona State University in Phoenix, Royal Academy of Copenhagen, Newcastle University at the UK, Mackintosh School in Glasgow, University of Sydney, Curtin University of Technology in Perth, University of New South Wales, Facoltà di Architettura di Roma “La Sapienza”, ETSA of Barcelona and Facultad de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires; and have also coordinated student workshops with Enric Miralles, John Hejduk, Juan Navarro Baldeweg, Cedric Price and Clorindo Testa.
(see the ‘ACADEMIC‘ section for further details)
COMPETITIONS
The office has been successful in national and international competitions, most recently in 2022 as finalists of the competition in the competition for the adaptive reuse of the Tecnhicum 4 in Ghent as a new School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and in 2020 with first prize in the competition for Building a community in Lund. In 2019 Flores & Prats won first prize in the competition for the Théâtre des Variétés in Brussels and were finalists for the competition for the new Somerset House Auditorium in London. Other selected examples are: Finalists of a restricted competition for the new MIT Design Hub School of Architecture + Planning and Project Manus (2018), Second Prize at the open competition for the renovation of Theatre Arnau (2018), Second Prize for the renovation of Vallcarca neighbourhood in Barcelona (2017), Shortlisted at the Housing Competition on the area of Glòries in Barcelona (2017), First Prize for the New Sala Beckett in Barcelona (2011), First Prize for the rehabilitation of Casal Balaguer Cultural Centre in Mallorca (2010), Second Prize for the Renovation of the Fabra & Coats Industrial Building in Barcelona (2009), First Prize for the renovation of the Industrial Settlement Cal Vidal in Puig-Ruig, Barcelona (2007), First Prize for the Urban Plan for the Rehabilitation of the Old Centre of Vilanova (1998) and First Prize EUROPAN III International Competition (1993).
EXHIBITIONS
The projects of the office have been exhibited in monographic (Roca Gallery in London, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Leth & Gori Storefront in Copenhagen, COAC of Barcelona and Castello Chiaramonte in Sicily) and collective exhibitions (Works + Words Biennale in Copenhagen, Biennale di Venezia, Berlage Institut in Rotterdam, Architekturzentrum Wien, Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel, Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Arkitekturmuseet of Stockholm and the Cité de l’Architecture & du Patrimoine-Palais de Chaillot, Paris).
PUBLICATIONS
In 2014, the Mexican Editorial Arquine published the first monograph book on their work, Thought by Hand. The Architecture of Flores & Prats, which has had two reprints (2016 and 2020), and, in 2017 the new magazine Archives dedicated its first issue to the work of this office, also reprinted twice (2018 and 2020). In 2019 they guest edited IQD magazine, and in 2020 edited a book on the project of the Sala Beckett International Drama Centre with Arquine. More recently Flores & Prats was the subject for the first issue of Archives Universum#1 (2021), focusing on their way of working, and have authored the book Flores & Prats. Dibujar sin borrar y otros ensayos / Drawing without Erasing and Other Essays, an anthology of writings around the approach of Flores & Prats to practice. The most recent book to have been published in April 2024, Building Communities, Rehabilitation and Housing in Barcelona and Zurich, documents the process and work done by the students of Eva Prats (Studio Prats) at ETH Zurich D-Arch between 2019-2021.
The work of the office has been published nationally and internationally, including the following:
a+t magazine (Spain), AD Architectural Digest (Germany), Arquitectura Viva (Spain), Architectural Record (New York), Architectural Review (UK), Architecture Today (UK), Architekt (Prague), Architektur (Austria), Arkitekten (Denmark), Arquine (Mexico), AU (Brasil), Azure Magazine (Canada), C3 magazine (Corea), Casa Brutus (Japan), Casabella (Italy), de Architect (The Netherlands), Detail (Germany), DBZ Deutsche BauZeitschrift (Germany), Domus (Italy), El País (Spain), FiO (Austria), Frame (The Netherlands), Icon (UK), Id+c (China), INTERNI (Italy), IOArch (Italy), L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui (France), La Vanguardia (Spain), Le Carré Bleu feuille internationale d’architecture (France), Le Monde (France), Metro Society (Philipines), Monument (Australia), ORIS (Croatia), OUTSIDER (Slovenia), Perspective (Italy), PLOT (Argentina), Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme (Spain), Salon (Ucrania), SD Architecture magazine (Tokyo), Stoà (Italy), Summa+ (Argentina), Tectónica (Spain), The Guardian (UK), The New York Times (US), Wallpaper* magazine (UK), YAPI (Turkey), Yorokobu (Spain), Zeppelin (Romania)