Enric Mirales : an obituary

Fergus McArdle

An obituary is often a gentle dull text.
Enric Miralles' life was neither dull nor gentle.
He had an aura about him.
I remember it clearly from my first day in his studio
In my good clothes. In awe, perhaps
Staring at the Archery Range drawing
Framed in the large entrance hall.

'Clean-edged, fine-drawn, drawn out, redrawn, remembered...'*

A philosophy we worked towards in the studio.
It was how an architect's studio should be.
The concentrated, almost audible hum of thinking resonated the air-
The crisp cryptic drawings, his hallmark, spread out on every desk.
Those stunningly beautiful balsa models
Like offcuts, edges of other things...

Or those long competition weeks,
Edinburgh or Venice.
Enric would be there,
Tuned-in, incisive, decisive, demanding,
Informing us with his sketches
Piece by piece
Leading us to it
Feeding it to us, his rapt audience.
We would draw and redraw
Make, remake and remould
Until the ideas took shape.
He teemed with ideas
Never obvious, at least not at first,
But gradually, the inspired logic would unfold.

At his funeral in Igualada, at the back
In my good clothes, still in awe,
I mourned the death of this extraordinary man.
Enric Miralles I Moya 12 February 1955- 3 July 2000

Fergus McArdle is an architect who recently spent two years working in the office of Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue.

*Seamus Heaney, 'An Architect' , The Spirit level ( 1996 ).