Jonathan Arnabat Vila (Sabadell, 1977), Jordi Ayala Bril (Barcelona, 1975), Aitor Fuentes Mendizabal (Mondragón, 1981) and Igor Urdampilleta Placencia (San Sebastián, 1981) started working together as students at the UIC School of Architecture in Barcelona. They rented a space not far from the school to study and focus on their very first commissions. Arquitectura-G was officially founded in 2006, right before the financial crisis.

Soon, a range of other activities began interacting with the office’s architectural production. In particular, they have been contributing to Apartamento Magazine since 2008, and founded the brand Indoors in 2011. While their editorial work has generated a system of references seen in their projects, Indoors has stimulated new considerations of the domestic dimension through objects. Housing is the building type in which Arquitectura-G has the most experience, and it ended up forming the office’s design method. Scale 1:20 models are used to test choices of materials, structures and spatial inventions, in addition to pure composition. Models have the added benefit of being important tools for communicating with clients.

The evolution from students to young professionals to mature architects has been constant and fluid, says Arquitectura-G, and progress came about through a learning-by-doing process. A first turning point came with Casa Luz (2013) in Cilleros, Extremadura, a scale that the office had not yet worked on. The renovation received the 2015 Mies van der Rohe Emerging Architect Award.

In 2018 came the first newbuild, Casa a La Floresta in Sant Cugat del Vallès, an isolated house immersed in vegetation. The building was dry mounted and uses materials that the practice had not yet experimented with: concrete foundation, structural box of laminated timber, and corrugated steel cladding. The first floor rotates in relation to the ground, creating a series of skylights and small terraces that give the house a distinct look in terms of space and atmosphere.

The Acne Studios shop (2019) in Nagoya, Japan is poised at the beginning of a new transformation that promises to bring Arquitectura-G very far – in scale and type of project, and in quantity of international commissions.