Elke dinsdag ben ik voor het nieuws van 11 uur te gast in het KRO NCRV programma Spraakmakers op Radio 1 om actuele ontwikkelingen op het gebied van architectuur en stedelijk leven te bespreken. De architectuur is nog steeds toch echt een mannenbolwerk. Van oudsher zijn architecten voornamelijk mannen, het zou ‘te technisch’ zijn voor vrouwen. Dat verandert, maar langzaam.
Winners of the 2017 Pritzker Prize are RCR Arquitectes, a Spanish studio located by deliberate choice in the volcanic hinterland of the province of Catalunya. I interviewed them for NRC Handelsblad and made a video interview as well.
The reaction is most of the architecture world was: ‘Who?’ By chance I knew their work: I had stayed in an extraordinary hotel they designed with rooms made entirely of glass, I had visited a school + library in the Barcelona neighbourhood of Sant Antoni, and I had seen an exhibition on their work in Barcelona. I returned to their town of Olot, to the 16th-century foundry where their studio is located, to speak with them, and visited their striking underground bodega in Palamós, on the coast north of Barcelona.