Enric Miralles
Enric Miralles (1955 – 2000) was a Catalan architect, designer, draftsman and professor. Since graduating from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB) in 1974, his career grew rapidly and took extraordinary directions. His work is, even today, highly influential, innovative and avant-garde.
Miralles’ career began in 1973, when he started working as an assistant in the studio of his teachers and architects Albert Viaplana and Helio Piñón. During this period he had the opportunity to learn and collaborate in projects that have become icons of Barcelona architecture. Typical of this period are projects such as La Plaza de Sants.
Ten years later, in 1983, his career took a new direction when he opened his studio with his first partner, Carme Pinós. It is there that Miralles was able to intervene first-hand in the designs, getting closer and closer to his recognizable and expressive architectural language. Tangent curves, asymmetrical tilting steel and concrete structures are some of the key attributes that Miralles manages to master in this stage together with Pinós. Buildings such as Tiro con Arco or El Xementiri are some of the most poetic examples designed at that time.
However, it was not until the 1990s that Miralles’ work reached its greatest complexity and delicacy. Together with his second partner and colleague, the international architect Benedetta Tagliabue, Miralles’s work is a strong integration of materiality and above all color, adding them with impeccable finesse to his already outstanding architectural style. Treating their work as a game and each project as a new frontier, Miralles and Tagliabue designed unique architectures. From small scale like Lungo Mare or Kolonihaven, to masterplans like the Santa Caterina Market or the Scottish Parliament, to projects that are simply spatial poetry like Heaven or the Meditation Pavilion in Unazuki.
Together, they opened their studio EMBT Arquitectos, a studio that until after Enric’s untimely death has prevailed thanks to Benedetta’s tenacity and their continued passion for spreading the imaginative architectural visions they shared.
Enric Miralles was the author of impressive sculptures, houses, pavilions, markets, public spaces, parliaments, schools, parks, museums, collages, ideas and drawings. In his brief career, he developed a genuinely original and exuberant language that is still influential today. His projects built across Europe and Asia, his brilliant writings and words, along with his wit and humor, continue to inspire and influence all of us who share his curiosity.
Enric Miralles 1955 – 2000.
