Flores & Prats

Flores & Prats is an architecture studio established in Barcelona which combines design and constructive practice with an 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 to build, in order that the projects are made, built and so they can participate in the interpretation that provides the finished work. Their projects, most of which are the result of open competitions, have investigated in fields such as rehabilitation, social housing projects, or urban public spaces and neighbourhood participation. But the office has also developed mobile or portable projects, has experimented with the use of film to document the architecture, or the most recent menus of edible architecture developed for the exhibitions of its work in Barcelona and Copenhagen.

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 and 2016, and nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Prize 2005, 2015 and 2016. They have recently received the Barcelona City Prize 2016 for their work Sala Beckett / Internacional Drama Workshop.

Since 1998 they have lectured in Spain and abroad, including the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, Architektur Zentrum Wien, the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (Sydney and Perth), Washington University in Saint Louis and the Schools of Architecture in Barcelona, Milan, Valencia, Alicante and Buenos Aires, among others.

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.

The projects of the office have been exhibited in monographic (Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Leth & Gori Storefront in Copenhagen, COAC of Barcelona and Castello Chiaramonte in Sicily) and collective exhibitions (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).

In 2014, the Mexican Editorial Arquine has published the first monograph book on their work, Thought by Hand. The Architecture of Flores & Prats, and in 2017 the new magazine Archives has dedicated its first issue to the work of this office.