RCR Architects - Indispensable Material

RCR Arquitectes belongs to highly respected contemporary architectural studios not only in their native Spain. In 1988, it was founded by Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta. Their buildings communicate very sensitively with their surroundings, avoiding unnecessary or rhetorical forms, while combining precision and strength. RCR Arquitectes is based in the city of Olot in the province of Girona. The landscape around this small town, where this team of architects established themselves in 1988, has had a fundamental influence on their work.

„To live and work in harmony with the landscape“ – this slogan has accompanied the Catalan studio RCR Arquitectes since its very beginning. It is also one of the reasons why the architects settled in the town of Olot, which lies at the foot of the Pyrenees. Although they create their works far from the pulsating Barcelona, in several key projects they show that the rural environment is not entirely foreign to modern architectural concepts. Despite a complete disruption of established construction concepts suitable for these places, their architectural works correlate with the surrounding landscape in a delicate and harmonious way with nature. By using patinating steel known as Corten, which significantly slows down corrosion, the RCR studio has integrated a material that perfectly aligns with the character of the surrounding nature into their buildings.

Carme Pigem, one of the RCR architects, who participated in last year's conference Architecture Outside the Centers in Liberec – among other things said: „After studying in a big city, we naturally returned to our town, Olot. We didn't even think about any other option because it seemed entirely logical to us. Our professor gave us an important piece of advice for life – You must refuse your first big client. When someone comes to you, as a beginning architect, offering a huge project in an immensely attractive location, refuse it. It’s a trap. Many talented architects spent their first years chasing a chimera. The result was just a lot of wasted energy that they could have dedicated to small but meaningful projects. – So when an investor came to us offering the opportunity to work on a complex with more than 300 apartments overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, we said: No“…
After RCR Arquitectes built several houses, a stadium, a restaurant, and guesthouses in Olot, they demonstrate the essence of their work and topographical approach in the Horizon House in the Spanish Girona, completed in 2007. This residence is literally set into the ridge of a hill, from which parallelepipeds made of glass and steel emerge at regular intervals. However, a similarly sensitive approach can be found in several other projects. Just to name a few – Changing rooms in Olot (1998), Cultural Center Riudaura (1999), Athletics Stadium in Olot (2001), Bell-Lloc Winery in Palamos (2007), Public Space Teatro La Lira in Ripoll (2011), several private houses, or in 2014, a remarkable open Museum Soulages in the French Rodez.
In addition to the frequent use of materials like the mentioned Corten, RCR also utilizes the advantages offered by glass. One can recall works where they play with colored filters – at the Els Colors kindergarten building in Manlleu, or work with the theme of transparency in the renowned Els Cols restaurant with a hotel in Olot.

In the bamboo garden there, we can also encounter another element – metal strips, highlighting a natural metaphor. We then find these strips in one of the "outside - Spanish" realizations, which is the crematorium in Belgium's Hofheid, where these strips form the cladding of the outer walls, symbolizing the foliage of trees. Thus, the architects achieve that air and light penetrate the gaps in the building, disrupting the solid envelope, resulting in what is the intent in this case but also an important theme of RCR Arquitectes – „materialization of the immaterial“.

The significant attentiveness to nature has also led the architects to another activity, which is working for many years as consultants to the Natural Reserve of the volcanic area of La Garrotxa.
The work / architecture / RCR is very strongly tied to the place where it is located, and it is also necessary to talk about the strong atmosphere it evokes.

In their first exhibition not only in the Czech Republic but in Eastern Europe, they do not present a so-called portfolio presentation, i.e., “mere” images of already realized buildings, but as they themselves state, „Through photographs / Hisao Suzuki, Emiliano Roia, Pep Sau, Marc Checinski / you can experience different atmospheres in architectural spaces, like in architectural areas… and make tangible what is intangible“.