HISTORY
estudioHerreros is an architecture firm with offices in Madrid, New York and Mexico City, operating worldwide and employing about 20 architects from different nationalities. The firm is the consolidation of the 30-year career of Juan Herreros, Chair Professor at Madrid School of Architecture, and Full Professor of Architecture at Columbia University in New York.
Historically speaking, estudioHerreros is the refounding of Herreros Arquitectos, which in turn was built on the legacy of the now legendary Ábalos&Herreros, established in 1985. While Herreros Arquitectos was an adventure initiated by Juan Herreros himself with the intention of building a strategic position and a working method in accordance with the times, defined by a global practice and focused on talent, multidisciplinarity and a collaborative work method, estudioHerreros builds on the achievement of such objectives by means of the transformation of Herreros Arquitectos into a partnership structure that incorporates Jens Richter as the first partner translating the personality of the office into a true corporate structure.
estudioHerreros follows the policy initiated by Herreros Arquitectos of selecting commissions and competitions that can be considered platforms for typological research and innovation in a culture that allows the actual design practice to occur simultaneously with the theoretical and teaching practices, indissolubly nourishing each other. Intentionally, projects of all scales, from the urban and the complex building to medium and small undertakings, coexist alongside one another in the studio. These projects, situated among works or art, temporary installations, interior design or small constructions of all kinds, constitute the research laboratory of the technical and theoretical resources that will later be applied in projects and works of greater complexity. In the middle range, the firm has broad experience in the complete development of singular buildings with great communicative capacity in which all the technical, logistical and subjective aspects have an equivalent importance, something that can be considered as a distinctive characteristic of the constructed works of the studio. On the scale of the complex building, the body of work of estudioHerreros includes a series of high-impact constructed projects such as museums, hybrid complexes and congress centres developed with the collaboration of large groups of specialists. Finally, the firm has to its credit, and is in the process of developing, a series of large urban and strategic projects that cover entire portions of cities characterized by the resolution of conflictive situations that require the concurrence of teams of great diversity and specialization in sustainable mobility, economics, social issues, and protocols for citizen participation.
In parallel with its professional practice, estudioHerreros assumes the responsibility of maintaining a critical position committed to the social, political, cultural and environmental dimensions of the present in general and of its production in particular. This position refers not only to its work and projects but also to the intense public presence of the office based above all on the figure of Juan Herreros, whose teaching, intellectual and media profile constitutes a reference point in establishing connections between the discipline of architecture and other environments of the world of culture, economy and social sciences.
The work of the different studios founded by Juan Herreros throughout his career has been massively recognized: the Colegio de Arquitectos de Madrid Award on ten occasions; the Madrid City Council Award on three occasions; the FAD Finalist on five occasions; the Barcelona City Council Award; the Comunidad de Madrid Award on two occasions; the Euskadi AVS Award for the Best Housing Undertaking; the Construmat de Barcelona Award; the Urbanism Award of the Bienal de Arquitectura Española; the NAN Award for the best work abroad on two occasions; etc. among the national awards; and the Prize of the Biennial of Iberoamerican Architecture of Applied Research; Grand Prix of the European Union; Finalist of the Prize Mies van der Rohe on four occasions; Solutia Design Prize; Holcim and Cemex Prizes; AR House Prize; etc. among the international ones. Likewise, his work has been exhibited in individual exhibitions (several architectural associations: Singel-Antwerp, IIT-Chicago, Architectural Association-London, CAAM-Las Palmas, ICO-Madrid, ROM-Oslo, Venice Biennale, Studio-X in Rio de Janeiro, Franz Meyer Museum in Mexico City, etc.) and collective exhibitions, including the Venice and Istanbul Biennials, the Spanish (in 10 editions) and Ibero-American Architecture Biennials, the MACBA in Barcelona, the Aichi and Zaragoza Expos, the “New Trends of Architecture” exhibitions in Tokyo, “Dialogue” in Tokyo and Madrid, “Open Innovation” in Panama, “Above MM” in Mexico City, “Musées du XXIe Siècle” in Geneva, “Vertical Urban Factory” in the Skyscraper Museum of New York and especially three of the compilations made by MoMA-New York (Light Construction-1995, Groundswell-2004 and On Site-2006) etc. It has also been published in hundreds of specialized and general magazines and a significant number of monographs edited by Gustavo Gili, Actar, 2G, AV, CAAM+ICO, Arquitectos de Tarragona, Summa, Future Latinoamérica , Future China, PLOT, TC Cuadernos, etc.
Among the office works built outside of Spain, some noteworthy ones include the Ágora-Bogotá Events Centre in Colombia, the requalification of the public areas of the MALBA Museum in Buenos Aires, the Panama City Banco Panama Tower, the Communication Hut project in Gwangju, South Korea, the ambitious infrastructure public space systems of the cities of Colón and Panama City in Panama and the Tacubaya Strategic Plan in Mexico City. In 2019, estudioHerreros will finish off four emblematic works won in international competitions: the Munch Museum in Oslo; one of the blocks of the EUROMED project in Marseille and another in the ANFA development in Casablanca; and a mixed housing building in Sant Boi, Barcelona. Work will also begin on the Santiago de Compostela Pedestrian Walkway and the TAP commercial, hotel and office complex in Guadalajara.
WORKING METHOD
In 2014, Herreros Arquitectos was transformed into estudio Herreros with the intention of opening up its practice to a partnership based configuration with which an international agenda can be approached while building on a solid national reputation. The first architect to become an associate is Jens Richter in recognition of his career with Herreros Arquitectos which began with its founding and where he has held the post of Director since 2010.
estudioHerreros is an office with some twenty architects of various nationalities and is organized on the basis of the interaction with various stable but external collaborators with recognized prestige in the technical fields as well as environmental engineering, landscaping, cultural management and strategic programming organized structured into four distinct areas: projects and competitions, development and follow-up of construction projects, the carrying out of projects and communication.
What is specific to the design methodology at estudioHerreros is the application of a work system which adapts the 30 years of experience of its founder Juan Herreros to a new generation of highly complex projects where divergent elements come together to find a happy coincidence: advanced architectural and urban programs and ideas, conflict situations of all kinds, strategic management matters, technical difficulties, sustainable energy resources, etc. These interests can only be developed with security on the basis of multi-disciplinary working through the organization of teams specific to each case and establishing genuine conversations -both creative and technical- regardless of the size of the project and without being subject to disciplinary limits. The fundamental idea adheres to the organizational principle of “the elaboration of a project for every project”, the cornerstone of the studio where the customer, specialists and architects come together to construct a situation of permanent dialogue where there are no matters of lesser importance. The purpose of this methodology is to bring to life the exercise of a clearly pragmatic style of architecture with the conviction that what we schedule, design and build is for those who will both use it and inhabit it. Understood in this fashion, architecture and urban design produce a map of the relationships between users and the world. This conception allows us to read our work as an ideal means where a new dialogue involving culture, nature and available technology is opened up with the ultimate purpose of constructing a civil society which finds in the city and its urban condition, the reason for being of our labors.
The normal process begins with the establishment of a strategy specific to each project headed up by a lead architect who assures control and continuity throughout the process. Under the orders of the lead architect there is a team, expressly set up to initiate a series of conversations, with the intention of starting up all parts of the project at the same time. Design, structural layout, energy, organizational, financial or planning criteria are all active aspects from the earliest stages making the “conversation” the basic instrument for a professional practice where all of the agents involved take part. For projects of a certain scale, estudioHerreros organizes workshops for discussion where the clients, the specialists and the architects themselves seek to establish the underlying priorities for the design which is most apt for the occasion.
All of the means necessary are made available: information technology resources (around 30 computers, 2 plotters, 5 printers, 3 scanners, laptops, etc.), all of the usual management and design programs including the latest high compatibility tools (Revit) and of course the personnel who are trained in a strict protocol of design, storage, data protection and confidentiality organized around a high security internal network with copies made daily.
Our employees are of the highest possible national and international excellence in their specialism while the members of our teams maintain an ongoing and permanent presence in the forums where disciplinary encounters include teaching, conferences, research and theoretical activities. Among us we maintain an interest in developing new implications for architecture in society, the economy, environmental awareness and definitively, the urban culture of the inhabitants who are the end-users of our designs and the customers of our clients who are the truly key part of the whole scenario.
At present estudioHerreros is involved in projects in Spain, Norway, Switzerland, France, Morocco, Mexico and Uruguay.