Design Vanguard 2015

Losada García Architects, Cáceres, Spain/San Diego

In the face of a weak economy, two partners expand their practice across continents.

By David Cohn

Losada GarcÃÆÃâÃâÃÂa Architects — **Losada García Architects**

*Photo © Javier Lairado*

**Espacio Gourmet (Plaza Castilla Kiosk)**

The houselike form and open facades of this long-term food kiosk, a sidewalk concession in a prominent Madrid plaza, are inspired by the “economical houses” from the early 20th century near the architects’ former Madrid studio and the vibrant social life they promote. The structure was bolted together and enclosed with a lightweight insulated facade system finished in stucco for the roof and exterior walls, and ash wood for the interiors. Services are located in a basement and an attic-like upper level lit by a scattering of round skylights. The life of the bar spills out onto the surrounding sidewalk.

*Photo © Alfonso Herranz*

**La Gota Cultural Center/ Tobacco Museum**

This competition-winning project combines galleries for paintings by local artist Sofía Feliu and temporary art exhibitions with a museum dedicated to tobacco, the region’s principal crop. The glazed levels are superimposed in an irregular, crisscrossing pile that the architects compare to the branching leaves of a tobacco plant, producing balconies on every side. The facades’ ceramic screens evoke the louvered openings of traditional tobacco-drying sheds. They also filter sunlight and create an insulated air cushion in front of the sheer glass walls. An entry plaza features a vertical garden planted with tobacco and local vegetation, which extends into the lobby.

*Photo © Miguel De Guzman*

**Peraleda House**

Located in a rural town in western Spain, the house is relatively closed to the street but opens up around an interior garden, overlooked by a fully glazed upper gallery. The stone of the facades was mandated by local building ordinances to maintain the character of the town. Its deeply set staggered openings respond in scale to those of a church across the street, and reference works such as Ronchamp or Mansilla and Tuñón’s León Auditorium, according to the architects. “We maintain the memory of the place on the exterior,” Ramiro Losada explains, “but contemporize the interior facade, where we had more freedom.”

*Photo © Javier Lairado*

**ARCO Contemporary Art Fair Stand (2010)**

Madrid

Wanting to create a moment of visual relaxation in the midst of the stimulation of an art fair, the architects designed a space with a horse-shoe shaped thoroughfare. Smooth white contours provide a perception of depth and the art pieces seemed to float in space. The inner wall of the curve, made out of soft padded material also hosted back-projected video art pieces.

*Photo © Alfonso Herranz*

**La Gota Cultural Museum/Tobacco Museum (2015)**

Navalmoral (Cáceres), Spain

This competition-winning project combines galleries for paintings by local artist Sofía Feliu and temporary art exhibitions with a museum dedicated to tobacco, the region’s principal crop. The glazed levels are superimposed in an irregular, crisscrossing pile that the architects compare to the branching leaves of a tobacco plant, producing balconies on every side. The facades’ ceramic screens evoke the louvered openings of traditional tobacco-drying sheds. They also filter sunlight and create an insulated air cushion in front of the sheer glass walls. An entry plaza features a vertical garden planted with tobacco and local vegetation, which extends into the lobby.

*Photo © Miguel de Guzman*

**La Gota Cultural Museum/Tobacco Museum (2015)**

Navalmoral (Cáceres), Spain

This competition-winning project combines galleries for paintings by local artist Sofía Feliu and temporary art exhibitions with a museum dedicated to tobacco, the region’s principal crop. The glazed levels are superimposed in an irregular, crisscrossing pile that the architects compare to the branching leaves of a tobacco plant, producing balconies on every side. The facades’ ceramic screens evoke the louvered openings of traditional tobacco-drying sheds. They also filter sunlight and create an insulated air cushion in front of the sheer glass walls. An entry plaza features a vertical garden planted with tobacco and local vegetation, which extends into the lobby.

*Photo © Miguel de Guzman*

Plaza Castilla Kiosk — **ARCO Contemporary Art Fair Stand (2010)**

Madrid

Wanting to create a moment of visual relaxation in the midst of the stimulation of an art fair, the architects designed a space with a horse-shoe shaped thoroughfare. Smooth white contours provide a perception of depth and the art pieces seemed to float in space. The inner wall of the curve, made out of soft padded material also hosted back-projected video art pieces.

*Photo © Alfonso Herranz*

**STEAMConnect Conference Pavilion (2015)**

San Diego, California

Designed for the annual conference of a forward-thinking organization that bridges the arts and STEM communities, this design/build project was built in 4 weeks with a budget of $3,500. It was realized in collaboration a student workshop of the NewSchool of Architecture & Design.

*Photo © Maha Studio*

Losada Garcia Architects — **La Gota Cultural Museum/Tobacco Museum (2015)**

Navalmoral (Cáceres), Spain

This competition-winning project combines galleries for paintings by local artist Sofía Feliu and temporary art exhibitions with a museum dedicated to tobacco, the region’s principal crop. The glazed levels are superimposed in an irregular, crisscrossing pile that the architects compare to the branching leaves of a tobacco plant, producing balconies on every side. The facades’ ceramic screens evoke the louvered openings of traditional tobacco-drying sheds. They also filter sunlight and create an insulated air cushion in front of the sheer glass walls. An entry plaza features a vertical garden planted with tobacco and local vegetation, which extends into the lobby.

*Photo © Miguel de Guzman*

Globe-trotting and media savvy, up in the Cloud and down-to-earth, Ramiro Losada and Alberto García represent a new breed of Spanish architect. While previous generations often sought the limelight by editing a magazine, as did Rafael Moneo, who cofounded Arquitecturas Bis in the 1970s, Losada, 35, and García, 33, launched Studio Banana TV, a multimedia platform that produces interviews and documentaries about design, art, and culture on the Web. They opened their first office in Madrid in 2008, but work was scarce due to Spain’s economic crisis. Losada decamped for southern California, where he teaches at the New School of Architecture & Design in San Diego, and García returned to the rural province of Cáceres, in western Spain, where they both grew up and were childhood friends. To maintain this bicontinental partnership, the two communicate daily via WhatsApp, in the car or on the jobsite, as if they were both still back in Madrid.

Web-based media have influenced the concepts and values on which the men build their designs. In their largest project to date, La Gota Cultural Center and Tobacco Museum in their hometown of Navalmoral, the irregularly stacked, glazed floors are screened by a mesh of ceramic tiles mounted on wires. With its lack of depth and visible structural support, this fabric-like curtain reads in photographs almost as a computer rendering. According to the architects, it creates “a dematerialized elevation of refined geometries.”

The conceptual element of their designs tends to be visual associations. Thus they compare the overlapping floors of La Gota Center to the branching pattern of leaves of a tobacco plant, in that each of them are both “alike and different.” For the Espacio Gourmet, a food kiosk in Madrid’s main business district, they found inspiration, without a trace of critical irony, in the modest social housing from the early 20th century that survives nearby.

Both partners trained as project managers before going on to study architecture, and this background gives them a solid hold on construction detailing. “In rural Cáceres, you can’t always work with every construction system,” Losada points out. “But we understand this not as a problem, but an advantage.” Meanwhile, in San Diego, he has been learning new management techniques, which he brings back to Spain.

Though they both worked at different times for Madrid architects Óscar Rueda and Maria José Pizarro, and profess admiration for Luis Mansilla and Emilio Tuñón, they don’t consider themselves disciples of anyone in particular, as was usually the case when Spanish architecture was more locally bound. “This probably has a lot to do with the internationality of the places where we’ve studied and worked,” Losada observes. For Losada and García, like others of their generation, one of the challenges of contemporary practice is how to move in this virtual, dispersed, and quickly changing world without losing touch with solid ground.

Losada García Architects

FOUNDED: 2008

DESIGN STAFF: 4

PRINCIPALS: Ramiro Losada Amor, Alberto García Jiménez

EDUCATION: Losada Amor: UE-Madrid, M.Arch., 2006; Universidad de Cáceres, M.Eng., 2001. García Jiménez: UE-Madrid, M.Arch., 2008; Universidad de Cáceres, M.Eng., 2004

WORK HISTORY: Losada Amor: Mecanoo, 2006–07; Rueda Pizarro, 2005; F.O.A. 2004. García Jiménez: De La Puerta Asensio, 2008–11; Rueda Pizarro, 2007–08

KEY COMPLETED PROJECTS: La Gota Cultural Center/Tobacco Museum, Navalmoral (Cáceres), Spain, 2015; STEAM Pavilion, San Diego, 2015;
Plaza Castilla Kiosk, Madrid, 2014; ARCO Fair of Art Stand, Madrid, 2010

Key Current PROJECTS: Peraleda House, Peraleda (Cáceres), Spain, 2014–16; Torres House, Navalmoral (Cáceres), Spain, 2015–16; Interior Library, San Diego, 2016

www.losadagarcia.com

KEYWORDS: architecture firms