Special visiting hours:

Friday the 2nd & Saturday the 3rd: the installation can be viewed from inside the Mercat dels Encants from 9 am to 8 pm, during the market’s opening hours. From 8 pm to 11.30 pm, although the market will be closed, the installation will be visible from outside.

Sunday the 4th: the installation can be viewed from inside the Mercat dels Encants from 6.30 pm to 11 pm. 

Beneath the mirrored canopy of the Mercat dels Encants, Mireia Luzárraga and Alejandro Muiño have installed an arboreal artificial reef. It is a device that uses the large volume of air available in this building, which is all roof, to create an artefact capable of stimulating the biodiversity of its urban environment: a surprisingly beautiful object made up of birdhouses, irrigation pipes, hanging plant features, grow lights, fans, and ultraviolet lights; an ecosystem with an inevitably sculptural character—also due to its relationship with the market’s mirrored reflection—that invites the coexistence of flora and fauna to engage with a space designed for relations between “natural” and “cultural” agents; a shelter suspended from the canopy with a lightweight structure of cables and tubes, with highly technical elements such as grow lights, shade nets, and fans with the sole purpose of producing more efficiently. 

Mireia Luzárraga and Alejandro Muiño are the founders of TAKK, an architecture and design studio based in Barcelona. Their projects explore how architecture can catalyse the development of more democratic lives by incorporating feminist thought, ecology, and politics into spatial practices. Both are currently faculty members at the GSAPP of Columbia University in New York, as well as at the University of Tokyo, the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), and La Salle. They have previously served as lecturers and speakers at institutions such as the University of Alicante, ETSAM, the European Institute of Design (IED), ELISAVA, RMIT, the Floating University Berlin, and ILEK at the University of Stuttgart.