Profile
Estudio AIA ARQUITECTOS INGENIEROS ASOCIADOS was founded in 1990 as a multidisciplinary office.
We understand the built work as a constant interaction between architecture and engineering, disciplines split in the eighteenth century and that we consider convergent today.
We understand Architecture_Engineering and vice versa as the BUILT IDEA. Without idea, the artifice is limited to an empty form incapable of transmitting emotions to people.
We understand the project work of the engineer and architect as a work at the service of society in the constant improvement of the environment in which human life develops, from the design of small-scale everyday objects to the construction of large-scale works capable of transforming a city.
We firmly believe that it is not a question of building IN a place, but of building THE place, in the belief that it will be better after the intervention of the architect and engineer. We strongly believe in collaborative work between engineers and architects.
We are convinced that the quality of our environment directly influences the quality of human life, from the home, the workplace, leisure, our urban environment to large interurban infrastructures.
We believe that architectural and engineering works must resolve people’s needs, must respond to the physical context, to the place, where they are located with the highest design excellence and must be built with the highest quality, optimizing economic resources, getting MORE WITH LESS in the evolution of Mies van der Rohe’s idea of LESS IS MORE.
We believe that the best architecture_engineering is the result of a synthesis of the set of elements that intervene in the constructive phenomenon: the structure that supports it, defying the law of gravity, the facilities that make it habitable, the space, the light that models it, the expressiveness of the form, its relationship with the environment, its bioclimatic properties that make it sustainable and finally its capacity to transmit emotions and make the lives of people who enjoy it happier.
Our large cable-stayed bridges due to their scale and formal power have become benchmarks of the cities in which they are located, the Royal Bridge in Badajoz, the Arriaca Bridge in Guadalajara or the Talavera de la Reina Bridge.
Recently our project for the new Alcántara bridge next to the Roman bridge built almost 2000 years ago represents a significant challenge of integration and coexistence with an emblematic work destined for “PONTEM PERPETVI MANSVRVM IN SAECLVA MVNDI” to last forever in the centuries of the world.
We bring here a few words from Luis Barragán, civil engineer from the Escuela Libre de Ingenieros de Guadalajara de México and Pritzker Prize for Architecture: “In an alarming proportion, the words beauty, inspiration, charm, magic, enchantment have disappeared from architectural publications, as well such as serenity, silence, intimacy, emotion and amazement ”(From the speech to collect the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Washington DC 1980).