2c, Flores i Prats Architects

“The ‘as found’ is a fleeting but attractive concept. It is one of those attitudes that evaporate the moment you try to bottle a definition … fascinated by the unintentional poetry of ordinary things” - Dirk Somers 31

31 Van den Driessche, Living the exotic Every day, 159-60 It is the same ethereal longing that informs the choice to give the attic spaces, which has never before been inhabited, a different material approach. Rougher textures and earthy colours speak to a space that had long belonged to the pigeons of Antwerp (Fig N).

(Fig N) Visual connection between the atmosphere as found in the attic and the different material choices made in these spaces.

30 2c – Flores and Prats Architects

Having met while working together for Enric Miralles, the Catalan couple Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores have become so much more than the inheritors of his

spidery drawings and idiosyncratic angled plans. Sidestepping the contemporary obsession with predetermined outcomes and quantifiable results, they deal directly with the art of transforming buildings, producing beautiful drawings and humane spaces.

The ‘Cooperative Pau i Justica’ (Co-operative of peace and justice) was a product of the famously lively and widespread workers movements of early 20th century Catalonia. It was a meeting place, a theatre, and a grocery shop with subsidised and reliable prices obtained through collective bulk purchasing (Fig B). Unfortunately the fate of such solidarity movements in Spain was grim, and while the co-op survived for a while, when Flores and Prats first visited in 2010

(Fig A) Openings in and above the central spine wall.

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(Fig B) Subsidised grocery shop and members of the Cooperative Pau i Justica in its heyday.

it was long abandoned (Fig C). They were tasked with transforming it into a new home for the Sala Beckett Theatre. A suitable inheritor, the Sala was an alternative theatre with a reputation for being socially conscious and engaged with its surrounding community. It had grown slowly in an industrial building, now forced to move by the vicissitudes of the market they wished to make their mark on a new space32 .

(Fig C) Selected internal spaces as found by the Architect.

“The physical decadence in which we found the building interested us, not with a view to returning it to its original condition, but rather, with that of bringing the ruin forward in time … making it participate in a new reality that might continue to be updated on the top-most layer” - Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats33

32 Eva Prats, Ricardo Flores, Toni Casares et al. Sala Beckett International Drama centre,

Rehabilitation of the former Cooperative

Pau i Justica, (Arquine, 2020), 8.

33 Eva Prats, Ricardo Flores and Carlos

Quintans, Archives 1: Journal of Architecture

Flores & Prats. (El Croquis, 2019), 171. The new Sala Beckett theatre is arranged around a long wall which becomes the spine of the project. While previously this had separated the functions in the cellular nature of the old co-op, Flores and Prats transform the wall into a hub of circulation (Fig D). With key incisions in and above the wall, they let natural light into the deep plan. A piece of drama is created with visitors and shafts of light disappearing and reappearing at different levels. Architectural features become art on the wall, be they a door left stranded to nowhere or

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(Fig D) Model, drawing and finished photograph of the central spine wall.

ceiling roses relocated from demolitions made elsewhere in the project (Fig E). The manipulation of light, through filters and openings also served a purpose in referencing the quality of the ruin. Multiple changes of use by the co-op, but rare overarching rationalisations had left a layered surface. Long abandonment had cut through allowing light, water and air to fall into the rooms. The interventions draw on this reading of the ruin, preserve and further it, creating a space of great depth and eclectic beauty (Fig F).

(Fig E) Architectural features become art on the wall.

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(Fig F) Visual connection drawn between the light breaking through the introduced openings and a ruined condition.

Modified, moved and reorganised elements (Sala Beckett Theatre)(Fig G)

As part of the design process Flores and Prats spent a long time in the abandoned building, gathering information, taking measurements, and drawings everything that was still there in great detail. The survey they completed was far superior to the norm, detailing every door individually at 1:20 scale and each tile pattern or ceiling rose in a similar fashion (Fig H).

(Fig H) Detailed surveys of doors, windows and tiles.

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(Fig G) Tiles re-laid in a new decorative pattern making careful use of the existing patterns and colours on the tiles.

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“We were manipulating material that was very common in the city of Barcelona, … this kind of woodwork and flooring often ends up in the dumpsters … The inventory would be a way of making the contactor understand their importance in the future of the project” - Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats 34

(Fig I) Existing and moved locations of doors, windows, staircases and other fragments.

(Fig J) Tiles being re-laid in their new locations.

34 Prats et al. Sala Beckett International Drama centre, 64. Their intuition was that all the building elements should remain, even if moved to a different location. This sprung from a desire to create a building that was not inhabiting the carcass of the co-operative but was in some ways a reanimation of it. The importance and scale of the architects exploration and recording cannot be understated. Once the building was broken down into it’s constitute parts, a great reshuffle was carried out, moving doors, windows tiles and even a whole staircase (Fig I). Much adjustment and tinkering was required but very little new fabric needed to be added and even less was removed. One of the largest moves was the return of hydraulic tiles to the ground floor, which had been lost in the intervening years. They were replaced with those from the upper and mezzanine floors. Faced with an eclectic mix of patterns and colours coming from the different cellular rooms upstairs, the architect created new patterns with old tiles incorporating them into the sweeping lines of their new interventions (Fig J).

Thus, they succeeded in creating a theatre space that still felt like it belonged to the surrounding community. This was expressed most successfully in the opening performance put on by the Sala Beckett. A piece of promenade theatre, it explored the whole building. The script was written by drawing on the experiences of those who remembered it its heyday and its slow decline over the 20th century. They then dramatized the anecdotes they had been told and strung them together to weave a story of their new home, which they then communicated back to the community (Fig K).

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(Fig K) Sala Beckett performs a piece of promenade theatre around their new home.

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Flores and Prats have managed to conjure a third primary partner out of thin air, their office itself. Used extensively in their publicity, it has become a character in their work which manages to represent all the drafts people and workman alike that bring their buildings into being.

“The physical place that contains books, papers, models, mouldings dragons, virgins and hats; everything that makes up the daily evolution of the ideas contained in the projects” - Carlos Quintans 35

(Fig L) Members of Flores and Prats’ team collaborating in their studio.

(Fig M) Screenshot from Flores and Prats’ interactive website through which you can explore the office.

35 Prats et al. Archives 1: Journal of Architecture

Flores & Prats, 16. On their website one can navigate virtually around their office, which inhabits a typical Barcelona apartment (Fig M). One moves from drawing to model to collage to moving stop motion. Even without visiting one can smell the essence of past and future projects mixing. It’s messy accumulation of projects and inspirations heartily rebukes the prissy minimalism, so common today. Luxuriating in the layers of time they replace the cleansing of grey and white paint with a vibrant maximalism.

Its controlled chaos and accumulation of artefacts also speaks to the true reality of construction, especially in conditions of complexity. No architect makes all the decisions before ground is broken, neither does any client refrain from changing their mind. Thus construction is messy, adaptive and above all, slow (Fig N).

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(Fig N) Sketches drawn over site photos, used to describe the desired atmosphere to the client and to the builders on site.

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