The first work built by the modernist architect Antoni Gaudí was Casa Vicens in 1885. It was a summer residence in the la Vila de Gràcia, a little town near Barcelona which nowadays is part of the city. It was renovated and enlarged by Joan Baptista Serra de Martínez in 1925, and unfortunately underwent several interventions between the 1960s and the 1990s. In 2005, UNESCO declared the house a World Heritage Site. From 2015 to 2017, the renovation and restoration of Casa Vicens took place under the direction of David García from estudio de arquitectura DAW Office. Curious about the history, architectural challenges and restoration of the interior of this Art Nouveau gem by the hand of Antoni Gaudí?
As part of the Art Nouveau Brussels 2023 and the Spanish Presidency of the European Union, MAD Brussels is organising a conference with Spanish architect David García about the restoration of Casa Vicens. The lecture is organised in collaboration with the Art Nouveau Network.Admission to the conference is free, reservation is required.
ABOUT David García
David García (Barcelona, 1979) is an architect by Universitat Ramon Llull. His academic training has remained active in parallel to his professional career. He has completed the MPIA Master and written a thesis on Arne Jacobsen's aggregative distributions, being currently a doctoral student in this field.
His professional career straddles between architecture, consulting and teaching. He started working in different architectural firms such as Estudio Benjamín Pleguezuelos or Martinez Lapeña - Torres arquitectos before founding his own studio together with his partner Antón Chacártegui in 2005. In 2010, he founded DAW Office, the studio he currently leads.
The various projects the studio proposed range from housing to urban masterplans, also including public facilities and heritage rehabilitation. Those do not seek to respond to a particular style, but are the result of an evolution in the design process. Among the most outstanding are the rehabilitation of the Casa Vicens together with Martinez Lapeña - Torres studio, the new Yacht Club in Premià de Mar, the rehabilitation of the Princesa19 residential building in the Born district of Barcelona or the drafting of the urban masterplan for Aguaduna, a future eco-city in Brazil.
The commitment to teaching architecture is another important point in David's career. He has been professor and coordinator at ETSALS (URL) and collaborating professor at ETSAB (UPC).
He is also a founding member of foundawtion, a non-profit organization whose aim is to provide solutions to social problems using architecture and design. Its first project was the CEM Kamanar, a primary school in southern Senegal that has won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the FAD internacional a la opición prizes for its simple and modern design while respecting local techniques and materials. Dawoffice has designed some other social projects in Africa following the CEM, and today they are working on two international projects in Senegal and Namibia.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Date & timing: Monday 6 November 2023
Doors: 18:30
Start: 19:00
Drink : 20:30
End: 22:00
Price: Free entrance, registration is required
Language: English
Address: Place du Nouveau Marché aux Grains 10 – Nieuwe Graanmarkt 10, 1000 Brussels
