A multi-disciplinary and complementary team

We founded Ruiz Pardo – Nebreda in 2011 after different professional and academic experiences, since we are a team consisting of a building engineer (Sonia) and an architect (Marcelo). We met at the Basque Handball Courts (Fronton Bizkaia), a project in Bilbao. One as the construction manager and the other as the architect. Despite being on different (and sometimes opposing) sides of the day-to-day of the profession, we found meeting points around the value of architecture. Given the backgrounds of each of us, we decided to form a team in which we felt that we complemented each other as an architectural and engineering practice to operate internationally.

Understanding the architect’s leverage

After completing works in Europe, America, and Africa, one of the most significant learnings has been to understand the role of the architect in each country. There are places where the architect hardly has a voice except in the banal questions of design, and others where it is simply not normal for the architect to be involved in the direction or supervision of the work. It is precisely in these contexts, where each professional only attends to their area of responsibility, where we see that the figure of the architect as we understand it, can be an instrument of dialogue capable of establishing links between them, as a catalyst.

Parallel tasks

For us, it is essential to personally manage the material execution of the projects through the direct supervision of the works. We spend a lot of time and effort to be on-site to coordinate all the details with the different agents. Taking into account the geographical dispersion of the projects between various countries, this forces us to travel regularly from one place to another, while keeping the office in Madrid running. We usually split up, and while one manages the studio, the other travels to the construction sites abroad. We also combine professional activity with our academic activity at the University in Madrid, ETSAM.

A space that draws memories towards it

Captures from different places line the walls of our studio where, by chance, new connections are established by putting together photos of landscapes from Namibia, metalwork samples from El Salvador, sun-baked bricks from Paraguay, and pieces of crafts from various places. The visited places move towards the studio. It envelops it, transforms it, and builds a parallel reality together with references from very diverse fields of art, science, literature, and also architecture.

Looking towards the urban space

In recent years we have mainly designed corporate headquarters and workspaces more by opportunity than by choice. In any case, we do not have any preference for any programme in particular because we understand that certain interests can be developed independently of the assignment. Now we are very much interested in some new challenges coming from the new ways we use the cities, the mobility of the people, the logistics for delivery of goods, or the appearance of industry 4.0 in the existing urban fabric.

The current situation derived from the pandemic affects projects abroad so some of our on-going commissions in El Salvador or Cuba are slowing down. However, we are very confident that we will soon finish a number of works in Spain and Portugal. We hope this situation will overturn shortly, and new opportunities will appear as the world is continuously changing!