Vicente Guallart

Vicente Guallart is chief architect of Barcelona City Council with the responsibility of developing the strategic vision of the transformation of the city and its major development projects. He was the first manager of Urban Habitat, a new department encompassing the areas of urban planning, housing, environment, infrastructures and information technologies. Previously he founded the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), one of the best Architectural Master Schools in the world, where he led projects such as Media House Project (with MIT's CBA), Hyper Catalunya, or the Fab Lab House. His professional office, Guallart Architects has developed projects such as the ports of Fugee and Keelung in Taiwan, the Sociopolis neighborhood in Valencia or Gandia Sharing Blocks. He is the author of books like Geologics or The Self-Sufficient City and co-author of the Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture. His work has been exhibited at the Biennale of Venezia, MOMA or AIA in Washington. He has published recently “The self-sufficient city” a book that outlines a blueprint for the world to come, a world built around cities and their renewed capabilities to become productive again, based on the principles of local self-sufficiency and global connectivity.

Work

He works in the confluence of Architecture, nature and technologies. Some of his more relevant projects are the Denia Mountain (reconstruction of an old quarry, in an environment that hold and old Arab castle, selected for the Venice Biennale 2004), 3 ports in the North of Taiwan that will improve the tourism in the island (winners of 2 international competitions), or the Sharing Tower in the neighborhood of la Torre (Valencia).

He spent part of his time with research and educational projects as former director of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC), in Barcelona, that holds an international postgraduate program on Architecture and Urbanism working in many scales “from Bits to geography”. In 2000 he co-directed with MIT’s Media Lab and another research Center, the Media House Project, the prototype of an informational house, based for the first time, in distributed computation.

He is author of the master Plan of the project Sociópolis, a housing project in Valencia that allows the urban development and the protection of the agriculture environment. He coordinates a group of international architects that will build different equipments and housing projects in this neighborhood. This project was shown in the Valencia Biennale, or the Arkitertur Zentrum in Vienna.

He is co-author of the Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture Actar, HiperCatalonia or Media House Project. The Korean publishing house DD dedicates the monograph “Intelligent realities” to his work. Actar publishing house is preparing his new book “Media, Mountains and Architecture”.

He has given lectures in different Universities and Cities around the world as Princeton University, Upenn, Architectural Association, UCLA, MIT, Space (Seoul), Woodbury University, Taipei and others. His work has been exhibit in the Biennale di Venezia in 2000 (in the Arsenale, with the group Metapolis), 2004 (in the Arsenale with the Denia Mountain Project), 2008 (in Arsenale with Hyperhabitat in collaboration with IAAC and CBA's MIT), 2010 (in the Sapnish Pavilion with the Fab Lab House) and 2012 (in the Spanish pavilion, as chief architect of Barcelona, with Portes de Collserola and City Protocol).

Sharin Tower was selected for the exhibition "On Site: New Spanish Arechitecture" in 2006 at MOMA in New York City. The American Institute of Architects organized a solo exhibition in Whasington in 2010 under the title "Geologics".

Main Buildings and Landscapes

Urban Plans

Other Projects

Ribes de Freser, 2000-2003

External links

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