The Pritzker David Chipperfield presents his foundation in Santiago de Compostela: "Architects are the best positioned to understand the relationship between the physical, the social and the environmental"
Under the umbrella of the Foundation created by David Chipperfield in Galicia, Casa RIA is born, a new meeting place for the exchange of ideas around sustainable development, recently presented in the Arquia space.
The Arquia Foundation was the headquarters where the new Casa RIA project was presented, a space open to the community in the Center of Santiago de Compostela and which will be the headquarters of the RIA Foundation, created by architect David Chipperfield.
His relationship with Galicia goes back a long way, in fact, he has spent the summer in Corrubedo every year for almost 20 years. The architect, winner of the Pritzker 2023, David Chipperfield , made it manifest in 2017, with the creation of the RIA Foundation , which is dedicated to analysis, reflection and strategic territorial planning. “The RIA Foundation was born out of my long personal relationship with Galicia. It is a beautiful land, however, the development of many of its cities is not: disorderly growth, terrible traffic planning, streets that have become highways and ports in parking spaces,” he explained recently at the presentation of the new space, Casa RIA, which will open its doors in June.
The event, presented this May by Javier Navarro Martínez , president of the Arquia Foundation and Arquia Banca, with the intervention of Manuel Rodríguez , director of the RIA Foundation, was held at Espacio Arquia. “At Arquia Banca, very concerned about corporate social responsibility, we created a foundation that has become the main architecture foundation in Europe. We have a large archive, we publish books, we organize cultural meetings, and we dedicate a lot of importance to offering professional internship scholarships, 635 so far and more than 50 that will be given this year. At the Arquia Foundation we like to create synergies with other foundations of interest and in this case we collaborate with the RIA Foundation and David Chipperfield Architects with two scholarships,” explained Javier Navarro Martínez.