David Baena, who lectures in Construction at the UIC's ESARQ School of Architecture, along with the other members of BCQ studio (Toni Casamor, Maria Taltavull and Manel Peribáñez, an alumnus of the ESARQ School of Architecture), has been awarded the 2014 City of Barcelona Prize in Architecture and Urban Planning for the design of the Sant Gervasi-Joan Maragall Library.
The panel of judges, presided over by Jordi Badia and comprising David Bravo, Giovanna Carnevalli, Meritxell Inaraja and Ramón Vilalta, decided on the basis of a majority vote to award the prize to the library designed by the Catalonia-based studio BCQ. The panel appreciated the plan to move away from the rigid concept of “library as building”; instead, it will become a public space that allows for conservation and improvement of the Vil·la Florida Gardens. Likewise, the library’s interior is broken up into spaces with a more human scale that are well-lit by inner courtyards to offer privacy in the midst of this public space.
Each year, Barcelona City Council awards a number of City of Barcelona prizes with the aim of rewarding creativity, research and other high-quality work produced in Barcelona by individual and group creators who work in the city and by the Barcelona-based institutions and organizations that promote them. The winning works must contribute to the city’s cultural development and form part of the urban community to which the creators, associations, public institutions and the cultural industries all belong.
The prizes will be handed out on Tuesday, 10 February 2015, at 7 p.m. in Barcelona City Council's Saló de Cent.
