Exhibitions
“Slide-Float: Weightlessness”, when architecture and sport converge in Banyoles
The Eat Art Space of the Lluís Coromina Foundation hosts the work of Quim Pujol, where the career of a former Olympic swimmer inspires shapes, volumes and spaces that connect art and movement.
The Espai Eat Art de Banyoles, of the Lluís Coromina Isern Foundation, inaugurates on Thursday, November 13 at 7 p.m. the exhibition Lliscar-Flotar: Ingravidesa , an exhibition that invites you to rediscover the work of architect and former elite swimmer Quim Pujol. The exhibition focuses on the intersection between architecture and sport, exploring how the creator's career in the world of high-level competitive swimming and his experience as an international leader have influenced his architectural practice.
Through this review, visitors will be able to appreciate a different reading of Pujol's architecture, marked by the sensation of lightness, movement and the relationship with water as an inspiring element.
Quim Pujol participated in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and from that moment in the Aquatics Center designed by architect Kenzo Tange and that iconic work left a deep mark on him. “I decided that, when I returned to Barcelona, I would enter the School of Architecture. I could not imagine a better way to dedicate my professional life once my time as a high-level competitive swimmer had ended.” In the field of architecture, he has signed outstanding projects linked to major aquatic sports events, such as the Swimming Pools of the 1986 World Swimming Championships in Madrid or the Duna Arena in Budapest, home of the 2017 World Swimming Championships, and has received awards such as the National Sports Architecture Award for the 2003 edition.
The exhibition offers a retrospective look at the sporting and professional career of Quim Pujol, born in Banyoles and with a career developed internationally. It is an opportunity to discover, from a creative perspective, the complicity between water and the swimmer, as well as the architect's immersion in the volumes that define his spaces. The exhibition draws a parallel between the vertigo of jumping into the pool and the moment when the architect is faced with a blank slate.
Between art and sport: an exhibition that unites two disciplines
The exhibition Lliscar-Flotar: Ingravidesa proposes a unique look at where art and sport meet. Through the work of Quim Pujol, architect and former elite swimmer, the public can explore how the discipline, tension and poetry of sports movement are transformed into architectural forms, volumes and spaces.
The exhibition reveals the parallels between the swimmer's experience—concentration, rhythm, relationship with the water—and the architect's practice, who, faced with a blank sheet of paper, must project with precision and creativity. Each piece on display reflects this dialogue between body and space, between physical effort and imagination, inviting visitors to perceive art as movement and sport as a form of expression.
The exhibition tour in Banyoles thus becomes a bridge between two seemingly distant, but deeply connected worlds, where the rigor of sport and the freedom of artistic creation are in perfect harmony.
