Benedetta Tagliabue

Benedetta Tagliabue (born 1963, Milan, Italy) is an architect currently practicing in Barcelona. She is the widow of Enric Miralles and continues the practice they set up together in Barcelona called EMBT. She speaks a fluent Catalan, as she had been in numerous Catalan televisions programs.

Education

In 1980 Tagliabue attended Columbia University in New York as a visiting scholar. She studied architecture from 1981 at the University of Venice and graduated in 1989 with a collaborative thesis on Central Park with Diane Lewis from Cooper Union.

Life

She began to collaborate professionally with the architectural practice Transbuilding and Gandelsonas-Agrest in New York in 1988 but moved to Career Camps 63 in Barcelona and worked in the Espinet-Ubach studio during 1990. The following year Tagliabue moved to a flat in Plaça Reial, in Barcelona and won 2 prestigous architectural awards. In 1993 she set up the EMBT practice with her husband Enric Miralles, the couple moved to a house in Career Mercaders, Barcelona.

Her daughter, Caterina Miralles Tagliabue was born in 1995 and a children's room was built in the house in Mercaders street. Benedetta worked as visiting Professor in Harvard. Miralles and Tagliabue launched their new studio in the Passage de la Pau, Barcelona and their son Domenec Miralles Tagliabue was born in 1997. The following year the couple won the competition for the new Scottish Parliament Building and enlarged the house in Mercaders with a double height space and more guest rooms. The following year EMBT won the First prize in a competition for the new IUAV University of Architecture in Venice.

On the July 3rd 2000, Enric Miralles died suddenly of a brain tumour before seeing completion of the Scottish Parliament, their biggest project to date. Mired in escalating costs and changes of the design by the client, the scheme attracted much controversy from the British press when it was finally delivered 3 years late and £380m over budget. Tagliabue is reported to have said that "the stress involved with working on the parliament, with its political and design problems, might have contributed to Miralles's death by obscuring the symptoms of his brain tumour if not actually causing it". [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20011209/ai_n13963707] In 1995, the practice won the Stirling Prize, The Architecture Grand Prix, was named best publicly funded building in Scotland.

In 2001 she received the first prize Delta ADI FAD for the Lungomare bench by Escofet and First Prize in the Nederlandse Bouwprojs, for Utrecht City Hall, Holland.

Work (Selected)

* 1995 House conversion in Barcelona
* 1996 to 2000 Six houses, Amsterdam, Netherlands
* 1997 to 2000 Park "Diagonal Mar", Barcelona
* 1997 to 2000 Utrecht City Hall extension, Netherlands
* 1997 to 2001 Library in Palafolls, Barcelona
* 1997 to 2001 Market hall conversion, "Santa Catalina", Barcelona
* 1998 to 2000 Extension of the national youth school of music Hamburg
* 1998 to 2002 Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh, Scotland
* 1999 Maretas Museum, Lanzarote
* 1999 to 2001 Park "Santa Rosa", Mollet del Vallès, Barcelona (province)
* 1999 to 2006 "Torre Mare Nostrum", Head office of "Gas Natural", Barcelona
* 2002 Public space design Western Hafencity Hamburg
* 2000 to 2005 New building of the architecture faculty, Venedig, Italy

Awards

*1991 First prize with her thesis in the "Biennal Joves de Barcelona".
*1991 ITALSTAD prize for Europe.
*1995 First National Architectural Price, Spain, for the Boarding School in Morella.
*1996 Received the Leone d'Oro at the Venice Biennale.

Publications

*1995 Mixed Talks, a book about the latest projects of the Miralles Office was published by Academy Editions.
*1996 Monographic issue of their work KA Korean Architects. Edited Enric Miralles: opere e Progetti, published by Electa
*cite book
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title = EMBT Enric Miralles, Bernadetta Tagliabue, Work in Progress
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publisher = Col-legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya Publications
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language = English & Catalan
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References

* [http://www.meamnet.polimi.it/archive/050/050m.html MEAMnet biography]