Alfredo Arribas, the architect who extends his architecture to nature and sustainability
Dreamer of worlds and landscapes, craftsman of creation, architect, farmer, winemaker... Alfredo Arribas is a man who connects creativity and nature. Imagining and building took him from dreaming in his youthful room to architecture, to return in 2001 to nature and the land of his childhood. Over 20 years traveling between two worlds that he affirms are not at all distant.
He harnessed the momentum of pre-Olympic Barcelona: “There was desire and excitement, everything was yet to be done”. Thanks to the joy of imagining the unknown, his architecture studio became a creative tower of Babel that also housed branding, video, production, and graphic expression teams. By cherishing the drive and positive energy, and a certain naivety, his name linked to Barcelona allowed him to work all over the world.
Recognized as one of the most international architects from Barcelona, he appreciates the opportunity to have participated in numerous interdisciplinary works that forced him to adapt to very diverse cultures, from the most detailed and artisanal to the most creative. “For me, starting to work in Japan had a significant impact. With many resources, work was carried out with rigor, efficiency, and precision to control the perfection of the results, and to extend the project to its ultimate reality. Later, in Europe, I learned that buildings could be made with very precise plans and the rest of the interior project on the space and with sketches”. “The contrast of cultures allowed me to focus on what's important and not on aspects that, sometimes, remain in the plans and never materialize”, he adds.
At the beginning, he sought his references in the “total architects, names that changed scale with great ease and coherence”. He claims that today he does not experience architecture with the same intensity and closeness as in his teaching days. He taught for 15 years at the ETSAB, Barcelona School of Architecture, and at ELISAVA. He left teaching due to the demanding pace: “As a teacher, you are very permeable. Then you move away from the curiosity of what others do and you become more closed and self-sufficient. In this way, the expression is more coherent, less scattered, and more sincere. I believe that architecture improves as people mature, because you manage to do things with less effort and fewer resources. In youth, you try to explain everything in a project. With experience, you don't have to demonstrate, you save it”. And he concludes: “Today, I do not feel the desire to publish or exhibit, I seek broader experiences and not those of a specialist. I do not need to continue the trajectory of my professional profile”.
From his perspective, Arribas assesses the current state of architecture after two major crises: “Currently, graphic expression has become very important and defines projects and competitions, especially public ones, which have become highly mediated. This has led to decision-makers being overwhelmed by the influence of graphic presentation. And it has been very detrimental because projects are chosen based on their image. Likewise, graphic expression has created the belief that anything is possible. And this results in the completed works having little to do with what was presented as the winning idea”.
When asked to choose some of his works, he is emphatic: “I'm not very nostalgic and I'm hypercritical of myself. I would save them for some personal experience rather than for architectural features (complex geometries, lack of durability, excesses of expressiveness...). I am satisfied with the simplest exercises, the most contained expressions, and projects with greater longevity, the most synthetic, probably the most recent ones in Barcelona. I have become an architect of the city, of Barcelona. Today, my references are not in the seductive graphic expression, but in the fusion between the natural world and the world of three-dimensional architecture. I want to bring to architecture the natural condition, the most honest expression of materials, and have them influence the scarcely built space”.
At this point, the conversation connects with his decision to acquire, in 2001, some land in the Denomination of Origin Priorat, a Mediterranean mountain in Tarragona: the estate Clos del Portal. “I bought the land that would later become the vineyard. I was motivated to buy it to have a space where I could work with nature. The wine came by chance. I discovered that I could work with people to bring that square of land to life. Unlike the farmer, I approach with the ability to transform the territory. I recover vineyards, but I do not revert to the old ways of exploitation. This is not sustainable now. I want to learn and move forward. To carry out respectful interventions and discover where we need to go. Wine is not an end for me, it's a means. It gives life to a landscape”.
After Priorat, he acquired land in the D.O. Montsant and at the intersection of both. From the influence of the territories, the biodiversity, his particular way of working them, the utmost respect in the cellar, and a biodynamic vinification, he obtains as a result a bottled photograph of the terroir, which contains textures, smells, different visions... both in Trossos as well as in VinsNus. This is what he claims to seek, that which made him extend his activity in architecture to nature.
In the creation of wines, he has also found great motivation. "I am inventing and discovering new ways of production. I am seeing that we can contribute from agriculture, not just viticulture, very advanced vinicultural expressions. I am still a learner. And I hope to influence and be influenced. To do this, we are transgressing some rules and concepts that were considered immovable". And he takes the opportunity to point out: "It is the only way for the world of wine to incorporate young blood, which has the ability to integrate into a culture that seemed very conservative. The challenge is to do things differently, this attracts, compensates, and offers satisfaction to the young".
When we asked what he would offer to people interested in his work, he did not hesitate: “To someone who is starting, I would have them try VinsNus, completely imagined and crafted with minimal intervention. They are photographs of places. I would expose them to this miracle to shorten the physical distance with a glass of wine”.
When asked how he assesses sustainability in Barcelona, he looks up and does not hesitate: “Barcelona has never really taken this factor into account. For example, in its 'hard plazas' the aim was visual cleanliness, but they have resulted in harshness. Barcelona is not a city integrated into balance and is, moreover, a city delimited and suffocated by its location”. With hope, he continues: “We need to make an effort, on the part of every architect, to integrate sustainability, even when it is not explicitly described. Generally, clients do not request it upfront, but they accept it. In many uses, such as leisure, it is necessary to open the project outward. To value the outdoor spaces or to recover the rooftops of buildings”.
“El valor de la sostenibilidad en cada proyecto se verá en los próximos años. Y tiene un coste muy pequeño, requiere esfuerzos suplementarios y alguna inversión extra, pero no es comparable a los elevados costos por alardes de geometrías imposibles, materiales inadecuados… Muchas veces, la concepción del proyecto marca una inversión desorbitada, como podemos observar en países ricos que no han madurado”.
Sustainability is the core focus in their recent activities, in a coherent manner. Evidence of this is the rehabilitation project of the building that will house Pier07, or the Hotel REC Barcelona, which opened in 2019.
We ask him to explain how he experienced the controversy that some of his works have generated and without hesitation he responds: “Barcelona is a city with a certain austerity of vital criteria. When we have carried out exercises of more marked expressions, we have had reactions from classical Barcelona”. And he clarifies: “One could make a subdivision of the professionals of the last 50 years, both in architecture and design, into two lists. Those aligned with the school of austerity and high cultural value, and those of us who choose to be more contemporary and more external to the local culture. We were moving very fast, very far, and we did not root with the line of austerity”.
And without leaving the City of Counts, when asked how he sees it today, the architect is emphatic: “Barcelona is gray”. And he explains that now, after years of moving through neighborhoods from Poblenou to Tibidabo, when he has to show the city he limits himself to: “The restaurants. They are the islands where I can get the essence of my life's reading and it's a beautiful way to share”.
This Barcelona which, through observing, living, and reimagining it, becomes their territory, is also synonymous with Núñez i Navarro for the architect: “For me, Núñez i Navarro means Barcelona. They chose to confine their work to Barcelona. We shared many views and have influenced each other positively, contributing to a remarkable evolution. With them, I've had the opportunity to contribute my bit to my city”.
We thank Alfredo Arribas for the time shared in his studio, around a large table suitable for reviewing plans or tasting wines in company, and we say goodbye to an affable man, true to himself, who, as his wines suggest, has looked back without ever ceasing to move forward.
*Alfredo Arribas is an architect graduated from ETSAB. Between 1978 and 1990, he taught as a professor of project design at ETSAB and was the coordinator of the Interior Design area at the Elisava School of Design. He has been recognized with awards including: the Gold Medal at the Miami Biennial of Architecture, the Award of the Maresme Triennial of Architecture, and the FAD Gold Medal in recognition of his professional career.
Among his notable works are: Osaka World Trade Center, two floors, Japan (1994-1995); Marugame in Shiko-ku, Japan (1991-1993); the Elisava School, Barcelona (1986); the Network Café Barcelona, FAD Interior Design Award (1987); the Nagasaki Aquarium, Japan; the Hirai Museum of Spanish Contemporary Art Takamatsu, Japan (1993), alongside Aldo Rossi; the Seatstadt Pavilion in the City of the Automobile, Wolfsburg, Germany (2000); the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, China; the lobby and restaurant of the Commerzbank in Frankfurt, Germany, with the contribution of the artist Joan Brossa; the Felisia Center in Castellaneta, Italy; the Ermenegildo Zegna headquarters in Sant Quirze, Barcelona (2005, FAD Award), the hotels B; SOHO and REC Hotel in Barcelona; the Veinsur Volvo Trucks building in Malaga (2008); the Triangle building of the Puigvert Foundation (2010); the rehabilitation of the La Rotonda building, Barcelona (2016) or the Pier07, Barcelona (2022). As well as the interior design of prominent leisure venues.
