Santa & Cole, Ediciones de diseño S.A.

Enric Batlle, born in 1956, graduated in architecture and specialized in landscape architecture at the ETSAB (Technical School of Architecture of Barcelona). He worked in the studio of Lluís Cantallops, J. A. Martínez Lapeña, and Elías Torres in Barcelona, and in the studio of R. M. Puig in Lleida.

In 1981, Enric Batlle and Joan Roig set up a studio, Batlle i Roig Arquitectes, that has carried out several building, town-planning, and landscape designing projects for all around Europe. All of their creations, mainly for outdoor spaces, share the same attitude: the premise to respect landscape. Thus, in all of their projects landscape and architecture go together, by means of the intersection of plans, contrasted surfaces and playing with full and empty spaces.

Their first professional opportunities arrived at a time when Barcelona was beginning to consider public spaces as a fundamental part of its regeneration process, a duty that architects had to assume. Between 1983 and 1986, Batlle and Roig won competitions and were assigned to carry out parks, promenades, squares and bridges, for instance: the Pegaso park, where a winding pond is at the center of a great variety of vegetal species, paths, different iron bridges and grass areas; the Roques Blanques cemetery (Barcelona, finalist at the FAD awards in 1985); or the bridge across the Besòs river(Barcelona, 1986). Throughout the 90s, some of their most outstanding projects were: the Nus de la Trinitat park in Barcelona (finalist of the FAD awards in 1993); the Palau Fontes in Murcia (finalist of the FAD awards in 1993); the conversion of the town centre of Amiens into a pedestrian area (France, 1990); the renovation of the old factory Torres Amat of Sallent into a public library; the remodeling of the Montjuïc façade to the sea (1998); the various parks in Sant Cugat del Vallès (first award to open spaces at the I Bienal d'Arquitectura del Vallès); the Milenium skyscraper in the Eix Macià and the Catalunya park in Sabadell (1999); the shores of the Ebro river in Zaragoza (2000); and the remodeling of the Ciutadella park in Barcelona (2001). For the project of urbanizing the riverbed in Arenys de Mar (1999), they created the Arenys streetlamp, inspired on their Vía Láctea streetlamp, that was awarded the ADI-FAD Delta award in 1992. In 1996, they won the competition to expand the sports facilities of the Fútbol Club Barcelona, that was achieved in 2002 with their new social center Joan Gamper in Sant Joan Despí.

The gardens at the Casa Bloc, in the Sant Andreu district of Barcelona, are a good example of the heterogeneous conception they have of their projects. They converted the abandoned pieces of land around the Casa Bloc into an urban space that took up again the original idea of the project back in 1936, it is in fact one of the most significant examples of Spanish rationalist architecture. The retaining walls, paving areas, and the gaps create terraces and yards that lead to use the space in many different ways. Roig and Batlle also added some of their urban elements: the Moon bench (1994), the Via Láctea streetlamp (1990) and the Atlántida drinking fountain (1991).

Enric Batlle also teaches Landscape Architecture at the ETSAV (Technical School of Architecture of the Vallès) since 1982, and at the Master program on Landscape Architecture at the ETSAB (now belonging to the Politechnical University of Catalonia) since 1987.

Plus d’informations: www.batlleiroig.com