Architect Carme Pinós is the principal of Estudio Carme Pinós in Barcelona. For over twenty years, the studio has undertaken outstanding national and international projects, working on creations within very diverse contexts, frameworks, programs, and scales in countries including Mexico, Austria, and France. Currently, it is one of Spain’s most prolific, award-winning architecture firms. 

Estudio Carme Pinós works on a wide range of typologies—from urban layouts, parks, bridges, seafronts, office towers, cultural and sports centers, universities, and schools to housing facilities and furniture design. A common denominator underpins all of the studio’s designs: an understanding of the world and of architecture in which common sense and responsibility take priority. Likewise, the projects undertaken by the studio reflect a concern for the city and the territory in which the most purely abstract geometry engages in a dialogue between large and small-scale projects and the human relations they generate. The work of Estudio Carme Pinós has a poetry and fluidity that blurs the distinction between architecture, urbanism, and landscape.

Pinós’s current projects include the Regional Office of the Generalitat in Tortosa, Spain; the architectural set composed by Gardunya Square, Massana School of Arts, a housing block, and the west façade of the popular La Boqueria Market in the Historical District of Barcelona; and the master plan for the historic center of Saint Dizier, France, where she is also carrying out various interventions in public spaces. Among her most significant completed recent projects are the Departments Building of the Vienna University of Economics and Business; the Cube II Towers in Guadalajara; the Caixaforum Cultural and Exhibition Centre in Zaragoza, Spain; the metro station Zona Universitaria in Barcelona; and the crematorium in the Igualada Cemetery in Spain.

Pinós combines work as an architect with teaching. She has been a guest professor at the IUAV of Venice, Architecture Schools of Paris, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, Columbia University in New York, l’Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Accademia di Archittetura di Mendrisio in Switzerland, and Universitá di Roma Tre in Italy, among others.

In 2016 Pinós was awarded the Richard J. Neutra Medal for Professional Excellence by the California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. She received the 2016 Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and Prize valuing her contribution to promoting the advancement of women in the field of architecture and her commitment to the community. In 2015 she was honored with the Creu de Sant Jordi Medal, one of the highest civil distinctions awarded by the Catalan government to individuals and organizations for their cultural and social services. She received the first prize at the 2008 Spanish Biennial of Architecture, the National Award for Public Architecture from the Catalan government in 2008, and the National Architecture Award from the High Council of Spanish Architects. She was named Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 2011 and RIBA International Fellow in 2013 for her outstanding contribution to architecture. Her work has been widely exhibited in galleries, museums, and universities. In 2012 Pinós launched OBJECTS, a collection of products designed, produced and commercialized by her own studio.

Participating units at UC Berkeley: Berkeley Architecture