The famed Sant Antoni Library by RCR Arquitectes, Catalonia’s only Pritzker Prize-winner, has been undergoing a complete renovation since September 2023 — only 16 years after opening its doors in 2007. That’s very little time. Even the average McDonald’s fast food restaurant on a Los Angeles strip is expected to last longer than that.
The celebrated library is currently shut down for almost year while it gets thoroughly refurbished: its roof is being redone, windows and facade panels renewed, the HVAC system (which broke down in 2019, causing a temporary building shutdown) is being replaced, and new flooring and new insulation is being added. The reason provided for all this work is deterioration of building elements, and bringing the building up to snuff in terms of energy-efficiency, a concept that must not have existed 16 years ago.
This is scandalous, quite frankly. Public buildings should be designed and built to perform for a reasonable length of time, no matter how experimental, vanguard, or famous the architects. How long is reasonable? That’s obviously up for debate, but I would argue two generations at the very least. What is certain is that this flies flatly in the face of RCR’s often-cited claims of “sustainability” and “respect for nature.”
There needs to be experimentation in architecture, and often experiments fail. But that doesn’t mean these failures should be hushed (there is no mention of this news in international architecture media). There are lessons that can be learned from failures, which is precisely why they must be publicized, lest they happen again. Yet failure is a tabu in architecture, a discipline that has become all about global branding, fame, and hairy-chested arrogance.
Furthermore, international architecture awards such as the Pritzker Prize need to be reconsidered: these kinds of awards should only be granted to exemplary built works rather than “careers” –which is just another word for stardom– and only after these works have withstood a test of time. If not, architecture will forever be doomed to merely provide instant gratification to tourists searching for an eye candy rush.
Criticalista 