Enric Miralles Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Enric Miralles (1955-2000) was a Catalan architect whose drawings and buildings, full of collage, movement and memory, made him one of the most influential architects of his generation. With Carme Pinós he designed the Igualada Cemetery and the Olympic Archery Range in Barcelona, and with his wife Benedetta Tagliabue, as EMBT, the Diagonal Mar Park, the Santa Caterina Market and the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, completed after his early death.

Barcelona and Viaplana-Piñón

Miralles was born in Barcelona in 1955 and studied at the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB), graduating in 1978. He worked for Albert Viaplana and Helio Piñón, contributing to the Plaça dels Països Catalans at Sants station, and spent time in the United States as a Fulbright scholar at Columbia University.

Miralles and Pinós

In 1983 he formed a partnership with the architect Carme Pinós. Their Igualada Cemetery (1985-1994), carved into a disused quarry with walls of gabions and concrete niches and paths of embedded railway sleepers, became one of the most celebrated works of contemporary Spanish architecture. They also built the Olympic Archery Range for the 1992 Barcelona Games.

EMBT

After the partnership ended in 1991, Miralles founded EMBT with Benedetta Tagliabue in 1994. Their works include the Utrecht Town Hall renovation (2000), the Diagonal Mar Park in Barcelona (2002) and the Santa Caterina Market (2005), whose wavy roof covered in coloured ceramic tiles evokes the fruit and vegetables sold beneath.

The Scottish Parliament

In 1998 EMBT won the competition for the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in Edinburgh, a complex of leaf-shaped roofs, timber and stone rooted in the landscape of Arthur’s Seat. Miralles died of a brain tumour in July 2000, at the age of 45; Tagliabue completed the building, which opened in 2004 and won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2005.