FOMENT DE LES ARTS DECORATIVES

"In the harsh Spanish post-war period, materials were scarce and so were projects, and the regime imposed its bizarre Herrerian tastes. Many of the rationalist architects had been purged or had gone into exile. There were only the schools of architecture in Madrid and Barcelona, each of which graduated around fifteen architects a year. However, around 1955, a group of young Spanish architects began to reintroduce modern and contemporary architecture, and did their best to learn and catch up. Taking up the baton from the Barcelona City Council's former Annual Artistic Building Awards, which honoured Barcelona's architecture and commercial establishments between 1899 and 1930, the Fomento de las Artes Decorativas created the FAD Awards for Architecture and Interior Design in 1958, promoted by the architect Oriol Bohigas. They wanted to recognise the fruits of this incipient contemporary architecture, which was to become so important in the world a few decades later. Since then, the FAD Awards have awarded the best works of Barcelona, Catalan and Iberian architecture year after year. And they have done so with independence and constancy and overcoming all kinds of difficulties, to become the oldest awards in Europe - and perhaps in the world - and one of the most prestigious"