As part of a recent projects, we began to explore how a series of small, precise interventions could generate meaningful change.
From that process came a set of reflections that we believe can shape our design strategy:

Material Honesty

The term, borrowed from low-fidelity music, describes a sound that is imperfect, open, authentic, and unpretentious. Could we add value from what is essential? Could we use what the place offers? Could we turn limitations into opportunities?

Lo-fi is raw and honest. Like grunge in music, it appears unpolished and emotionally authentic. In architecture, it means showing materials as they are. It doesn’t hide or disguise; it’s not minimal nor purely white. Lo-fi enhances the beauty of imperfection. It embraces error, welcomes failure, and with time’s patina, becomes a kind of Japanese wabi-sabi.

For example, the brass sheet that naturally bends into shape with simple steel tensioners in a project by Maciverek Chevroulet and Comte Mewly shows how one can imagine the patina that time will bring.

Two For One

But lo-fi is not just materiality: it’s about ingenuity. Its strength lies in making one thing serve several purposes — in doing more with less. This approach makes compact spaces work intelligently, without technological display or complexity.

In Ralph Erskine’s cabin in Lissma, a suspended piece of furniture lowers at night as a bed, folds during the day as a sofa, and disappears when not needed. The true lo-fi gesture, however, is outside: a simple wood stack that stores logs for winter and strengthens a north-facing wall’s insulation. Necessity turned into resource, scarcity transformed into beauty.

System

Modern Lo-fi is characterized by beats. Its gentle repetitions mirror modular systems in architecture: austere, accessible, adaptable, universal. It optimises construction and simplifies maintenance, replacement, and future updates, allowing each element to evolve with the needs of its users.

In La Villette, Bernard Tschumi overlays three simple grids. A collection of red folies marks the beat, transforming repetition into a light and essential rhythm.

Open Play

Lo-fi doesn’t fear humour. It uses it to create social experiences through the unexpected, with a universal code that connects with people. Humour in design breaks hierarchies, encourages interaction, and brings spaces closer to everyday life.

In Carlos de Beistegui’s penthouse, Le Corbusier builds an unusual stage: a white wall, a historicist fireplace, a grass floor, and in the distance, the Arc de Triomphe emerging as an urban backdrop. A minimal space made of contrasts — essential in form, complex in symbol. Not luxury, but irony. Not opulence, but play. To provoke wonder with the essential through a light, radical gesture: deeply lo-fi.

Lo-fi in its authenticity is also cheeky, and does not judge superficiality. Mirrors that expand space, objects that pretend without hiding, materials that aspire to more — why not? Like the final staircase in The Truman Show: both sky and exit. All of this shows how Lo-fi can be playful, cheeky, and witty at once.

Ambiguous

San Petronio, Bologna: the beauty of an unfinished process where history seeps through voids and each visitor completes the place with imagination. Lo-fi embraces incompleteness.

Weightless

Lo-fi frees space from excess and transmits lightness — a value from Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, already anticipated by Buckminster Fuller in the 1970s in his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth:

“I have owned successively, since boyhood, fifty-four automobiles. I will never own another… Possession is becoming progressively burdensome and wasteful and therefore obsolete.”

Contextual

Lo-fi is local in how it makes use of what’s close at hand. To do that, it’s essential to understand a place’s deeper identity: its atmosphere, character, and natural and cultural conditions. Through simple material strategies — like using high thermal mass — and both active and passive systems (shade as a creative process), comfort can be achieved without excess.

Zanuso’s house in Sardinia embodies this spirit: simple granite enclosures built in twelve months by a single local mason, where essentials protect and shelter, and light, shadow, and wind set the rhythm of life. A Sardinian refuge turned into a minimal dwelling where austerity is beauty.

How can architecture be more human? Maybe Lo-fi is about curiosity, improvisation, and letting life finish the work. Isn’t that very human? That’s exactly the approach we’d like our practice to follow.

This summer, we took a short break and swapped our home to spend some days in Köln, Germany. Traveling with kids means moving at a slow pace. Walking, cycling, exploring without hurry but with purpose. Our route was guided by two remarkable architects: Rudolf Schwarz, who rebuilt with material honesty after WWII, and Heinz Bienefeld, whose intimate, handcrafted buildings carry forward Schwarz’s sense of spirituality.

North Rhine-Westphalia revealed itself as a treasure trove of post-war architecture, with highlights such as Mies van der Rohe’s Haus Esters and Haus Lange, Erwin Heerich’s sculptural works at Hombroich, and Peter Zumthor’s Kolumba Museum and Bruder-Klaus-Feldkapelle. Visiting architecture is part of our practice, and we always return with something new. Now back to work!

This spring at EINA, we teamed up with David Steegmann to lead ‘Recursos’ — a design studio inspired by Georges Perec and Federico Soriano, where students explored how form and narrative can come together to imagine new ways of living. Thank you to all the students who were part of it!

Our proposal for an intervention at Palau Robert presented as part of the AJAC programme explored the idea of relocating domestic tasks to the public realm. By doing so, it invites reflection on the daily comfort of having clean running water at home—a privilege that is neither universal nor guaranteed.

The installation was inspired by the historical figure of the aiguader—a person who once carried and sold water in cities across Catalonia and Spain. Before municipal systems, water was collected from springs or wells and transported in clay vessels, either by professionals or by members of each household.

Recreating this process in a participatory way, the installation invites visitors to fetch water, fill a càntir, carry it to the artefact, perform a domestic task, observe the waste produced, and filter the remaining water for reuse. The act makes visible the effort once required to access water—and challenges the ease with which we waste it today.

The design references large public basins, kitchen sinks, and baptismal fonts: architectures where water once played a central role in daily and collective life. The labour of water collection has been widely documented, from the photographs of Artur Pastor and Kurt Hielscher, to paintings such as El Aguador de Sevilla (1620) by Diego Velázquez, La Aguadora (1808–1812) by Francisco de Goya, Thirst (1886) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and the poem El retorn (1934) by Maria Antònia Salvà.

Ripoll‘s Sports Centre has been awarded First Prize Ex Aequo at the Premis Comarques de Girona.

We are truly honoured by this recognition, which celebrates not only the design but also the vital role this public facility plays today. From the outset, it was conceived as a place for the community—shaped by its context, its landscape, and the resources at hand. For us, it was a dream-opportunity to work at a larger scale, materialised as a humble yet robust project. This award acknowledges a vision that goes beyond pure aesthetics and speaks to the broader role of the architect. We thank everyone involved.

We answered a few questions about Alba & Oriol’s house in the Spring issue No. 196 of  Neo2 Magazine. We talked about our connection to Colombia, rural houses, concrete bricks, plants, and Catalan poultry farms. Thank you, Javier!

The galerías —or verandas—of the haciendas are a defining feature of colonial Colombian architecture. These in-between spaces give shelter from the sun while extending indoor spaces into the landscape. Sometimes light and airy in timber, other times grounded by thick, weighty columns, they adapt to both place and purpose.

For Oriol & Alba’s house, since creating a patio was not possible due to the building code, the image of Colombia’s Haciendas immediately came to mind. We embraced the galería as a way to expand the house outward, carefully sizing it to provide shade from the southern sun in summer while allowing warmth to filter in during winter. Solid pillars, matching the thickness of the walls, establish a steady rhythm in contradiction with the delicate overhang of the roof.

The transformation is palpable as we approach the final stage of Ana and Oscar’s penthouse renovation in Barcelona. Walls have given way to openness, making Tibidabo and the city an ever-present backdrop to daily life. Natural mortar infuses the space with warmth, creating a calm Mediterranean retreat above the city.

Stay tuned, more info soon!

In Oriol & Alba’s House, an oddly bittersweet twist unfolded. A non-structural pillar, quietly standing in the garden, was meant to represent continuity—until the final inspection arrived. Deemed outside regulation, despite being initially approved, the pillar had to be demolished. Could it not be a garden sculpture? A Strelitzia now blooms where it once stood, next to its remaining foundations.