FAD Awards 2026: city, nature and memory at the heart of the architectural debate

This edition has produced a set of prizes that, taken together, offer a precise portrait of the moment Spanish and Catalan architecture is living through: rehabilitation as a central practice, the city as a living ecosystem and the built heritage as active material..

The award ceremony took place on Wednesday 17 June at the Disseny Hub Barcelona. The jury, chaired by Margarita Jover and composed of Aleix Alexandre, Lola Domènech, Javier Jiménez, João Paupério and Carme Ribas, awarded the FAD Architecture Prize jointly ex aequo to Recircular L’Eixample, by Flexo Arquitectura and Addenda Architects, and Infinito Delicias, by Husos Arquitecturas and elii [oficina de arquitectura].

Working with what exists: Recircular L’Eixample and Infinito Delicias

Recircular L’Eixample intervenes in an Eixample city block to reorganise, programmatically and structurally, a significant part of its built heritage. The project opens new pedestrian passages and public spaces that develop diverse civic facilities, generating among them synergies that the existing urban fabric had kept latent. The architectural language operates with functional clarity: each space is legible in its role and prepared to absorb future civic demands. The jury values both the public initiative that makes it possible and the project’s ability to respond to a specific brief and extend it, delivering more than was strictly required.

Infinito Delicias transforms a mid-terrace industrial building in Madrid into a public facility managed by a private foundation. The internal organisation unfolds through a continuous route that chains together interior spaces, exterior spaces and a large atrium conceived as a covered square. Environmental awareness runs through every decision in the project: the materials, the incorporation of vegetation and kitchen gardens, the energy-saving strategies and the promotion of biodiversity make up the building’s formal argument. The original structure is opened up and broken apart to encourage natural ventilation and support the new vegetation, which will gradually entwine itself with the enclosure structure. The jury observes that the building’s bioclimatic ambition operates as the guiding principle above any formal decision.

City and Landscape: the permeable park of the 21st century

In the City and Landscape category, the prize has gone to the second phase of the Canòpia Urbana —tunnel zone— in the Parc de les Glòries, by Agence Ter, Ana Coello Paisaje y Arquitectura and Meta Engineering. The project operates through a strategy of nodes and flows: the former function as spaces of biodiversity and civic use —meadows, play areas, cactus gardens—; the latter secure ecological and pedestrian continuity along the urban canopy and Barcelona’s major road axes. The jury recognises in this system the capacity to adapt the park to a dense city under climate pressure, reading it as an update of the public space model: from the paved square of the 20th century to the permeable, inhabited ground of the 21st. The project’s urban ambition, its infrastructural complexity and its contribution to the Diagonal Verde were the determining arguments for the recognition.

Interior Design: a domestic landscape of great spatial intensity

Studio MAIO has received the FAD Interior Design Prize for the refurbishment of an apartment on Calle Argumosa, in the centre of Madrid. Beyond a conventional entrance, the interior is reorganised through a diagonal route and a series of mirror doors that expand the perception of space. Traditional partition walls give way to curved timber volumes that function simultaneously as load-bearing structure, furniture and spatial boundary, integrating storage, circulation and enclosure in a single piece. The mirrors, articulated as sliding doors, produce an image in permanent transformation that reinforces the fluidity of the whole. The result, according to the jury, is a home where the domestic acquires a scenographic, continuous and mutable character.

Ephemeral Interventions: a metaphor at Chillida Leku

The installation Limina, at the Chillida Leku museum, has been awarded the prize in the Ephemeral Interventions category. Studios Garbizu Collar and KRI have built the architectural support for artist Koen Vanmechelen‘s proposal, which uses the hen as a metaphor for the relationships between art, science, politics and nature. The intervention takes shape through lightweight devices —metal structures suspended in wire mesh and galvanised tube— that engage in dialogue with the vernacular architecture of the farmstead and recall rural constructions such as henhouses and sheds. These artefacts hold the artist’s works and, at the same time, activate a reading that dehierarchises the human and the non-human. The exhibition display ceases to be a neutral backdrop and becomes an active layer that enriches the discourse of the show and the experience of the visitor.

Re-FAD Prize: energy efficiency as spatial value

The Re-FAD Prize has recognised the rehabilitation of L’Anònima Manresana, a 19th-century industrial complex in Manresa rehabilitated by Meritxell Inaraja through energy efficiency strategies. The project incorporates climate galleries, interior courtyards and perforations in the exterior ground that improve ventilation, natural lighting and comfort throughout the complex, while preserving the character of the original facades and opening new visual relationships between interior and exterior. The intervention adds a new layer to the existing construction using materials already present in the building, thereby establishing material and temporal continuity between past interventions, the current one and those yet to come. The jury singles out the capacity to turn the demands of climate control into values of architectural quality, making the memory of the place the starting point of the transformation.

FAD International Prize: the potential of the pre-existing

In its 13th edition, the FAD International Prize —recognising the work of architects and practices from the Iberian Peninsula in projects outside Spain— has been awarded to Abby Kortrijk, by Barozzi Veiga and Tab Architects. The jury, chaired by Jacob Van Rijs with members Lorenzo Kárász and Elena Orte, highlights the precise approach to intervention in an existing structure, treated as an opportunity to construct a renewed architectural narrative. The proposal works through enhancement: it intensifies the presence and identity of the pre-existing structure and allows it to re-emerge with clarity and renewed meaning. The project establishes a dialogue between past and present in which each element reinforces the other, revealing the latent potential of the building and projecting it into the present through subtle yet decisive operations.

FAD Thought and Criticism Prize: two female voices on architecture and territory

The FAD Thought and Criticism Prize, in its 21st edition, has been awarded ex aequo to two works of complementary nature and scope. The jury, chaired by Josep Maria Montaner with members Ester Giménez and Anna Puigjaner, has recognised Flotando en Litio by Marina Otero for the rigour with which it addresses the history of wellness spas in Galicia and northern Portugal, focusing on current claims against the effects of extractivism and participating in environmental and community activism to bring visibility to a problem that calls for urgent review.

The second prize goes to Hacia la ecomorfología. Entre la utopía y la realidad by Anna Bofill, a text written in the 1970s and now recovered by editor Ana Gilsanz. The jury considers it a genuine treatise on architectural theory and the alternative city, a work of anticipatory character and great intellectual quality whose legacy has influenced many women architects. The decision to publish it today gives the text a second life and reinforces its capacity to illuminate the relationship between architecture and its environment.

FAD Awards 2026