Casal Balaguer

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BACKGROUND: Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores through their practice Flores and Prats, together with Duch-Pizá rehabilitated Casal Balaguer, restored a baroque palace in Palma de Mallorca as a Cultural Centre into an exhibition space, house museum and offices of cultural affairs of the municipality of Palma. Various historical periods in which the building has been altered were explicitly sampled, grafting new onto old. The project (unfinished at the time) was exhibited at 'Grafting Architecture,' the Catalan Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. CONTRIBUTION: Flores and Prats' exhibit constituted of a cabinet with years of process material (models, drawings, collages, letters, and photos documenting the various stages of the project): a metaphor of Casal Balaguer itself, a building that is a container of several centuries of time. This unique method of presenting architecture, which the architects had tested in other exhibitions, contributes the idea that the architect's 'working material' - independent of any further use - has character in itself. The exhibit points to Flores and Prats' ongoing design methodology, which emphasises that a project is not only the finished building, but also all its in-progress materials, which, together, communicate deeper architectural thinking. SIGNIFICANCE: Casal Balaguer was one of 16 projects selected for the Catalan Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. It was also selected for the Spanish Pavilion, 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture (curators Carlos Quintans and Iñaqui Carnicero). Titled 'Unfinished', the exhibit was presented in the section 'Reappropriation.' The project was profiled in numerous international architecture and design publications including Domus, Wallpaper and Archdaily. In 2017, the project was a finalist in the Mallorca Architecture Awards (Rehabilitation Category), and awarded the City of Palma Prize of Architecture in 2018.