Flores & Prats Architects

Flores & Prats is an architecture office from Barcelona, dedicated to confront theory and academic practice with design and construction activity. After their experience at Enric Miralles’ office, Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats have developed a career where research has been always linked to the responsibility to make and to build. The office has worked on rehabilitation of old structures for new occupations, as well as on neighbours’ participation in the design process of urban public spaces, and on social housing and its capacity to create community. But they have also experienced using film to document architecture, or with menus of edible architecture for their exhibitions in Barcelona and Copenhagen as a way to bring their work closer to a broader public.

The work of Flores & Prats has been widely awarded, published and exhibited. They have been part of the Emerging Offices Wallpaper Directory in 2007, won the Grand Prize for the Best Architectural Work of the Royal Academy of Arts in London 2009 for the rehabilitation project Mills Museum in Palma de Mallorca, and the International Prize Dedalo Minosse in Vicenza 2011 for the New Microsoft Campus in Milan. Their work has been exhibited at La Biennale di Venezia in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018 with a double contribution: ‘Liquid Light’ at the main exhibition in the Corderie dell’Arsenale (a finalist at the 2019 FAD Awards), and ‘The Morning Chapel’ at the Vatican Pavilion; and in 2023 with their proposal ‘Emotional Heritage’ at the Corderie dell’Arsenale.

They have been nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Prize in 2005, 2015, 2016 and 2017. For the Cultural Centre Casal Balaguer, they were a finalist in the Mallorca Architecture Awards in the Rehabilitation Category in 2017 and awarded the City of Palma Prize of Architecture in 2018. For this project, Eva Prats was shortlisted for Architect of the Year at the 2019 Women in Architecture awards. Sala Beckett / International Drama Workshop received the Barcelona City Prize in 2016, in 2017 was a finalist for the FAD Architecture Prize, ENOR Architecture Prize, and Beazley Designs of the Year at the Design Museum in London, and in 2019 was the winner of The Architectural Review ‘New into old’ awards. Flores & Prats have received a special mention in the National Architecture awards for Spain and been named the Architects of the Year in the 2018 AD Awards.

Both partners are Associate Professors at the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona ETSAB-UPC since 2022. Eva Prats started in 2023 teaching as a guest Guest Professor at the Accademia di Mendrisio and previously she has been Guest Professor at ETH Zurich from autumn 2019 to spring 2021, and Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at the RMIT Campus in Barcelona from 2014 to 2022. Since 1998 they have lectured in Schools of Architecture, Museums and other Cultural Institutions of Spain and countries of Europe, Asia, Australia and America.

They participate internationally in cultural events, most recently in the Works + Words Biennale in Copenhagen (2022 and 2019), the Royal Academy of Arts in London (2022), Bienal de Arquitetura de São Paulo (2019), and as keynote speakers of the Bucharest Triennale (2019). They have taken part in congresses such as the Ultzama Campus 2017, IX Congress DO.CO.MO.MO Iberian (2016), and have been part of juries for the Competition for the new building of the Technical School of Architecture (ETSAE) in Cartagena (2017), III Ibero-American Biennial of Academic Architecture in Cuenca (2017), Islands of Arts (IOA) Venice (2016), FAD International Awards 2013, XVIII Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Quito (2012), and the VIII AJAC Awards Competition for Young Architects (2012).

They have been Invited Professors at the Arizona State University in Phoenix, Royal Academy of Copenhagen, Newcastle University at the UK, Mackintosh School in Glasgow, University of Sydney, Curtin University of Technology in Perth, University of New South Wales, Facoltà di Architettura di Roma “La Sapienza”, ETSA of Barcelona and Facultad de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires; and have also coordinated student workshops with Enric Miralles, John Hejduk, Juan Navarro Baldeweg, Cedric Price and Clorindo Testa.

In 2014, the Mexican Editorial Arquine published the first monograph on his work, Thought by Hand. The architecture of Flores & Prats, and in 2017 the new magazine Archives dedicated its first issue to the studio's work. In 2020, Arquine and the Barcelona City Council published the monographic book Sala Beckett. International Drama Centre and in 2021 the Archives Universum magazine dedicated its first issue to the private world and the studio's way of working. In 2023, an anthology of writings around their approach to practice is published by Puente Editores under the title Flores & Prats. Drawing without Erasing and Other Essays.