RCR Arquitectes' Catalan Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale

RCR Arquitectes, the Catalan studio founded by Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Villalta, presented the Catalan Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale, commissioned by the Institut Ramon Llull. The pavilion, located at the Arsenale's Cantieri Navali di Calle Quintavalle, is a 300-square-meter rectangular space divided into two areas: 'El Umbral' (The Threshold), featuring video projections on floating discs that narrate the studio's DNA and works, and 'El Sueño' (The Dream), an immersive environment created by 6,000 Fresnel lenses suspended on curtains, evoking the utopian world of La Vila. La Vila is the studio's latest project, a masía (rural estate) near Olot, Spain, purchased in 2017, which they plan to transform into a creative laboratory open to architects, artists, philosophers, and ecologists. The pavilion received positive feedback, with a priest from the Basilica of San Pietro di Castello calling it 'celestial.' RCR won the Pritzker Prize in 2017 and recently received the Selinunte International Prize. Future projects include the redevelopment of Île Seguin in Paris, where they will design a cultural and leisure building topped with a bird-shaped landmark pointing toward the Eiffel Tower, and the expansion of the Peralada winery in Spain. The studio hopes for dialogue between equals regarding the Catalan political situation.