BAU (B-Arquitectura i Urbanisme s.l.), is a design office for urban planning, urban design and architecture. Over the last 30 years BAU has established itself as an international practice with a team of 20 collaborators from different disciplines; urban planners, urban designers, architects, landscape architects and engineers.
BAU has participated in strategic urban planning and design for the cities of The Hague, Delft, Geneva, Rotterdam, Toledo, Lisbon, Barcelona and Toulouse among others around the world like Shenzhen, Shanghai, Ningbo and Montreal —most involving public-private partnerships—having also completed architecture projects for the modern center of Trento, Italy; Villanova, Spain; and Barcelona’s Fair Trade among others.
BAU can rely on an extended experience of academic and field-research, as well as a long-term practice in Urban and Architectural design, with particular experience in the implementation on European level of complex urban projects on derelict infrastructural sites and the development of a diversity of intermediate scale residential urban projects. Through a multi-disciplinary approach to complex design issues, BAU has extensive practice in large-scale urban master planning and design, landscape interventions, waterfront projects and public space projects. Across this wide range of work, we are consistent in our rigor of enquiry, richness of topographic imagination and pragmatism of process, using sophisticated combinations of spatial and social responses to re-imagine marginal or fractured areas of our cities. By combining our skills, we look to contribute to dynamic, recognizable cities.
BAU's creations and achievements derive their richness, meaning and beauty from the inspiration, work and commitment of each of its 20 employees: architects, urban planners, landscapers and engineers from various backgrounds. Inspired as much in researching the history of a site and its culture, meetings as cost analysis, we pay special attention to detail so that our projects embody a clear and high-quality identity. We learned that it is possible to associate functional, socio-economic, real estate, ecological and even spiritual values in our work.
Our cross-cultural experiences and the critical and active interest we bring to the city allow us to contribute to its urban, landscape, environmental, architectural and technological coherence. We are convinced that the sustainable cities of the future will have to be equipped with structures and convivial spaces. Thus, we base our plans on the in-depth analysis of all the aspects of a mission, so that the solutions fit in the physical context of the environment to answer its particular problematic and to create these convivial spaces.
BAU’s professional, interdisciplinary and multicultural team is based in Barcelona. We are used to working outside Spain by collaborating with local teams from different countries (Italy, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal, China, etc.). By gaining a good understanding of local issues through our ability to understand, evaluate and diagnose, this way of working makes a contribution to ever-complex projects. This mixed and different perspective can be developed by following a few shared "principles" that find quite specific declinations according to the vision of landscape architects or architects, for example, who participate in the execution of a strong holistic "vision" and able to be developed in time.