Between 20 June and 14 September this year, the Southern Centre for Architecture and the City (CMAV) in Toulouse hosted the exhibition 'Rowers, Young Architecture in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands', featuring the project which Catalonia and the Balearic Islands exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012.

Conceived by Jordi Badia and Félix Arranz and produced by the Ramon Llull Institute in collaboration with the COAC and the COAIB, ‘Rowers’ highlights the importance of austere architecture based on respect for the environment and its users, taking a quotation from Jorge Oteiza as its basic premise: 'He who forges ahead creating something new does so like a rower, moving forward but back-paddling, looking behind him, towards the past, towards what exists, so as to be able to reinvent its underpinnings.'

Thus, through the works of new Catalan and Balearic architects, the aim is to demonstrate that this kind of architecture is not just an automatic response to the economic crisis but a cultural and aesthetic trend that is directly connected to a whole intellectual, technical and social tradition of Catalan and Balearic architecture which has remained in place even when the international context was calling for other formal and expressive representations. It also makes a connection with the international trends that were already alerting us to the excesses of certain types of architecture in recent years.

The COAC has also developed a specific app that provides a guide to Catalan and Balearic architecture, featuring information on the 151 works and projects in the ‘Context’ section of the ‘Rowers’ exhibition.

The organisers of the ‘Rowers’ exhibition in Toulouse enjoyed the support of the companies CRICURSA, ESCOFET, FLEXBRICK and LAMP.

For more information on the exhibition, visit the Toulouse CMAV website.

Organised by: Southern Centre for Architecture and the City (CMAV)
From: June 20th to September 14th