Dense Structure-Stressed Structures

Anton Garcia-Abril works both with reordered nature and with prefabricated systems; with dense and tense structures. From the small scale of the house to the bigger scale of the city. From individual private wills to collective public needs. Where the construction systems used not only solve a structural problem but also configure the space, define the materiality, provide the expression of the architecture, and use the available resources in a responsible way. Along with the technical discourse, socio-economical and landscape issues are brought into the debate, where architecture should contribute much more and much better.

Anton Garcia-Abril, (Madrid, 1969) is a European PhD architect and associated professor in the School of Architecture in Madrid. He received the Spanish Academy Research Prize in Rome in 1996. In 2000, he established ENSAMBLE STUDIO, leading a team in search for architectural application of conceptual and structural experimentation. He has been an invited professor at Cornell University, as well as other universities in America and Europe, and writes about architecture in El Cultural magazine from El Mundo newspaper. His office has been awarded important prizes like The Rice Design Alliance Prize to emerging architects (2009) and the Architectural Record Design Vanguard Prize (2005), as well as having recently been selected by SANAA to participate in the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2010. There is constant research work in his projects which are nude structures that explore the essence of materials to create space. The SGAE Central Office in Santiago de Compostela and the Hemeroscopium House in Madrid, and more recently The Truffle in Costa da Morte (Spain), have been internationally published. At the moment, he has just finished the Museum of America in Salamanca; is building the Reader's House in Madrid's old Slaughterhouse, the Cervantes Theatre in Mexico D.F.; and is about to start the construction of the Berklee Tower of Music in Valencia. In 2009, he founded the Positive City Foundation which investigates the urban phenomenon giving practical responses.

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