José Selgas and Lucia Cano established selgascano in Madrid, Spain, in 1998. Both were born in Madrid in 1965 and studied architecture at Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. After graduating in 1992, Selgas worked with Francesco Venecia in Naples, winning the Rome Prize from Academia Espanola de Bellas Artes de Roma in 1997-8 Cano worked with renowned Spanish architect Julio Cano Lasso and was a member of the studio until 2001.

selgascano’s work is characterized by a use of synthetic materials and new technologies and uses distinctive colors and references to nature throughout their designs. selgascano also believe that architecture should be built with a consideration to existing surroundings, which has informed their design course on nature and climatology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and their work on the Educational and Medical Pavilion (Turkana, Kenya, 2014).

selgascano studio has completed the majority of its buildings in Spain through a diverse mix of commissions and competition winning projects, including Silicon House (Madrid, 2007); Office in the Woods (Madrid, 2009); El ‘B’. Cartagena Auditorium and Congress Centre (Cartagena, 201); and Factory Mérida Mérida, 2011). In 2014 they completed the refurbishment of Second Home, London. Current projects include Plasencia Auditorium and Congress Centre (Caceres, Spain Pip’ House (Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles the renovation of Texas Square (Oranjestad, Aruba); and ‘La Canaria’ House (Mount Washington, Los Angeles.

Selgascano’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York; GA Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Design Museum, London; Akademie der Kunste, Berlin; Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney; and the Keller gallery at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston; The architects were chosen for the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010 curated by Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA, and again for the Biennale’s Spanish Pavilion 2012, as part of SpainLab, an exhibition that brought together the work of seven Spanish architects. In 2013 they won the Kunstpreis prize) awarded by the Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, and were pronounced “Architects of the Year” by the German Design Council and were selected to design the 15th edition of the Serpentine pavilion in London in 2015.