Fundació Enric Miralles at Real Academia de Espana

Rome, March 2022. The Fundació Enric Miralles, with the support of MITMA (Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda of the Government of Spain) – General Directorate of Urban Agenda and Architecture, and with the collaboration of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, presents the exhibition “Weaving Memories”, which illustrates the architectural interventions realized in places of outstanding historical importance by the architects Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue, during the thirty years at the head of their Barcelona studio EMBT.

“As the director of the Accademia, I am very pleased that in the context of the architecture program of the Spanish Academy, in view of the 150th anniversary of its foundation in 2023, we can celebrate the importance of the work of the Italian-Spanish couple Miralles Tagliabue with this exhibition produced by MITMA”. Mª Ángeles Albert de León, Director of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome. From Thursday 3 March until mid-May 2022, the spaces and cloister of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome will host objects and stories related to emblematic projects by Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue, inviting the spectators to enter into their world of sketches, models, designs and visions.

“We are very happy to be back at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome. Our first exhibition here with Enric was in 1995, the second in 2012 and for me, it is always exciting to return. This new exhibition is a tribute to memory and continuity, but also to the desire to integrate into the fabrics of tradition without renouncing to creativity and novelty”. – Benedetta Tagliabue, curator of the exhibition and director of the Fundació Enric Miralles and the Benedetta Tagliabue – EMBT studio.

Continuity is the magic word. Continuity between the pre-existence and the new architectural work, as well as continuity of the EMBT architectural studio in the switch from the shared leadership of the two creators to that of Benedetta Tagliabue on her own, upon the death of Enric Miralles in the year 2000.

The exhibition route is articulated inside four rooms of the Academy in a timeless, non-linear sequence. Five emblematic projects are on display: the Market of Santa Caterina and neighborhood in Barcelona, the Town Hall in Utrecht, the Scottish Parliament, the transformation of Hafencity in the former Port of Hamburg, and the new church and parish complex of San Giacomo in Ferrara. Enric and Benedetta’s house in Barcelona becomes the common thread of the exhibition and is evoked by the presence of a series of décollage running along the walls of all the halls: a series of life-size prints of images of the house superimposed and torn in several layers, allowing the visitor to glimpse that which lies underneath.

The last room leads directly into the cloister, where the exhibition continues with the presence of further projects by the studio, important for the historical context in which they are set and for their ability to adapt to different geographical locations and changing situations. We find the project of Romanville in France, the Rimini promenade, the Kàlida Center in Barcelona, the Too Good To Waste installation, the Shanghai Pavilion, the Voglia d’Italia exhibition at the Vittoriano, the Naples railway station, and the “Paseos” and “Lessico Italiano” exhibitions in the same Royal Academy of Spain in Rome.

In other areas of the Academy, it is now possible to discover the “winks”, objects from other interventions by the Miralles Tagliabue couple, located outside the exhibition route and which “wink” at the exhibition. Flowerpots and ceramics from the Diagonal Mar Park in Barcelona, lamps from the exhibition MIRALLES. Perpetuum Mobile exhibition and table and seats from the “Taller de los sueños” are just some of the elements that can be found inside the large house which is the Academia.

The system used for the exhibition was personally designed by Enric Miralles for the ARCO fair in Madrid in 1996 but was never realized. Her daughter Caterina, in charge of mounting the exhibition, interprets it in a new way, adapting it to the spaces of the Academy.

Weaving memories celebrates the natural, playful, audacious, and sensitive architecture of Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue, from 1992 to the present day.