25 Catalan architecture studies (and a designer) for the world to come

The thirty or so Catalan firms participating in the UIA architects' congress, most as speakers, others as moderators, reveal the character of the new generations: rooted and at the same time with international ambition. Many of these architects entered the market in the midst of a crisis and had to diversify to get by. And all are more aware than ever of the sector's great social and environmental challenges. "The selection of firms is not a matter of people, but of contexts. There are certain practices that are at a professional moment of introducing new parameters that have marked a turning point," states Pau Bajet, the congress's curator along with Maria Giramé, Carmen Torres, Pau Sarquella, Tomeu Ramis, and Mariona Benedito. "While forty years ago we spoke of the autonomy of architecture and its undeniable capacity to transform spaces and the city, the practices represented at the congress, both Catalan and international, make us realize that there is a great diversity of phenomena and disciplines that interact with space." Previous generations, those of the architects who built Olympic Barcelona, are also represented at the congress, but on routes organized by the congress itself. "There is no tabula rasa, but rather the younger ones collect, with more or less significant transformations, built, geological, cultural legacies...", says Bajet.