Words: Verónica de Mello
12 / 01 / 2026
Herreros is an architect of the art world, and through estudio Herreros he has designed museums, headquarters for private collections, redesigned and corrected the architecture of importante institutions.
I met Juan Herreros in the world of art; a mutual friend who owns a gallery was the stepping stone we needed, but it would be untrue to say that without also mentioning the countless books I have bought about his work, spanning more than 40 years of practice, in the course of my life. His work spans Spain, Norway, France, Romania, Albania, Morocco, Mexico, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and South Korea. Herreros is an architect of the art world, and through estudio Herreros he has designed museums, headquarters for private collections, redesigned and corrected the architecture of important institutions – such as the Reina Sofia in Madrid – and designed galleries and art fairs, artists' studios and exhibition installations. Juan has been endowed with boundless energy and is constantly eager to be of help. His genuine smile and remarkable creative ability make him the ideal professional to explore the narrow and often porous boundary between art and architecture.
Verónica de Mello: Your work positions you as an architect who is knowledgeable about the world of art, for which you have carried out projects of all types and scales. What can contact with art offer an architect with so much experience?
Juan Herreros: Art provides an immediate response to the concerns that surround us, something that architecture is unable to do due to the slowness of the design and construction processes. That is why I always say that art shows us the way, the themes to work on, the new sensibilities that need to be cultivated and experimented with. In addition to that, art is experimental by nature, and in that regard, we are more interested in conceptual advances than formal ones. And in ways of looking at, interpreting, and describing the world than in aesthetic novelties. Let's say that we don't seek inspiration in the forms of art, but in its conceptual approaches to reality.
V.d.M. Let's talk about the experimental content you mention, because sometimes it seems like a cliché that demands a critical stance, beyond the insistent use of the word.
J.H. Half of our studio's projects have connections with the art world. This space offers us opportunities for exploration with open and committed interlocutors who understand that technique has social and political content, and that dialogue between creative and disparate disciplines is the best way to advance all of them simultaneously in their respective fields. The museums, galleries or installations we design serve as a laboratory for our proposals for other types of architecture and encourage us to infuse them with content that, although sometimes not particularly visible, has a significant impact on people's lives.
V.d.M. How has art influenced your working system?
J.H. Art knows and values the risk of trying and the productive dimension of error and chance. Although architecture cannot permit itself such freedom, a balanced mixture of pragmatism and poetics can make it tremendously influential.
Contact with art, artists, curators, gallery owners and museum directors has enriched our different registers and the layers of information in our projects, but above all, it has affected our own routines, making certain places – common in professional practice – unnecessary. For example, conversation has become the main instrument for decision-making.
We no longer conceive of a project without engaging in ongoing dialogue, from which decisions or project elements can emerge that would be very difficult to achieve through routine processes.
V.d.M. For you, the museum as a democratic, public space in the city is important. Is the Munch Museum in Oslo the project that best represents this desire to create a museum for everyone?
J.H. Yes, I would say so, because the project arose from a conversation in which, without having even drawn a line, we asked ourselves that question, and the project itself began when we understood that the museum should act as a cultural centre for citizens and also as a landmark of great character for global travellers, so that both could find their place there. A major museum in a major city must consider that its success is not only measured by the number of visitors, but also by the amount of repeated interactions with the local population, which measures the extent to which this repository of references about ourselves has become part of the daily life of citizens, which is just as important as its international prestige.
V.d.M. The architecture of the SOLO space itself – a 4,000 m² institution that houses an important art collection in Madrid – has been designed to allow visitors to experience the historical memory of the building while also featuring highly sophisticated contemporary characteristics. It is a place where a new way of designing and thinking about architecture can be understood. How was this project developed?
J.H. The SOLO space project has an extreme peculiarity, as it extended its experimental nature to the design and construction process itself, eliminating the figure of the complete project, the single construction company and tensions between the usual agents. It allowed us to realise our dream of creating a project in which the concept, design, construction, equipment and activation were carried out simultaneously, fuelled by dialogue, goings back and forth, improvements, twists and turns and enrichments that turned it into a project of projects that is both successful and miraculous. The philosophy that ‘it's never too late to improve’ and ‘the last word on nothing has been said’ allowed us to move forward with determination and resourcefulness, and with the support of remarkable artisans, to achieve a very unusual level of material and conceptual quality.
Verónica de Mello: Your work positions you as an architect who is knowledgeable about the world of art, for which you have carried out projects of all types and scales. What can contact with art offer an architect with so much experience?
Juan Herreros: Art provides an immediate response to the concerns that surround us, something that architecture is unable to do due to the slowness of the design and construction processes. That is why I always say that art shows us the way, the themes to work on, the new sensibilities that need to be cultivated and experimented with. In addition to that, art is experimental by nature, and in that regard, we are more interested in conceptual advances than formal ones. And in ways of looking at, interpreting, and describing the world than in aesthetic novelties. Let's say that we don't seek inspiration in the forms of art, but in its conceptual approaches to reality.
V.d.M. Let's talk about the experimental content you mention, because sometimes it seems like a cliché that demands a critical stance, beyond the insistent use of the word.
J.H. Half of our studio's projects have connections with the art world. This space offers us opportunities for exploration with open and committed interlocutors who understand that technique has social and political content, and that dialogue between creative and disparate disciplines is the best way to advance all of them simultaneously in their respective fields. The museums, galleries or installations we design serve as a laboratory for our proposals for other types of architecture and encourage us to infuse them with content that, although sometimes not particularly visible, has a significant impact on people's lives.
V.d.M. How has art influenced your working system?
J.H. Art knows and values the risk of trying and the productive dimension of error and chance. Although architecture cannot permit itself such freedom, a balanced mixture of pragmatism and poetics can make it tremendously influential.
Contact with art, artists, curators, gallery owners and museum directors has enriched our different registers and the layers of information in our projects, but above all, it has affected our own routines, making certain places – common in professional practice – unnecessary. For example, conversation has become the main instrument for decision-making.
We no longer conceive of a project without engaging in ongoing dialogue, from which decisions or project elements can emerge that would be very difficult to achieve through routine processes.
V.d.M. For you, the museum as a democratic, public space in the city is important. Is the Munch Museum in Oslo the project that best represents this desire to create a museum for everyone?
J.H. Yes, I would say so, because the project arose from a conversation in which, without having even drawn a line, we asked ourselves that question, and the project itself began when we understood that the museum should act as a cultural centre for citizens and also as a landmark of great character for global travellers, so that both could find their place there. A major museum in a major city must consider that its success is not only measured by the number of visitors, but also by the amount of repeated interactions with the local population, which measures the extent to which this repository of references about ourselves has become part of the daily life of citizens, which is just as important as its international prestige.
V.d.M. The architecture of the SOLO space itself – a 4,000 m² institution that houses an important art collection in Madrid – has been designed to allow visitors to experience the historical memory of the building while also featuring highly sophisticated contemporary characteristics. It is a place where a new way of designing and thinking about architecture can be understood. How was this project developed?
J.H. The SOLO space project has an extreme peculiarity, as it extended its experimental nature to the design and construction process itself, eliminating the figure of the complete project, the single construction company and tensions between the usual agents. It allowed us to realise our dream of creating a project in which the concept, design, construction, equipment and activation were carried out simultaneously, fuelled by dialogue, goings back and forth, improvements, twists and turns and enrichments that turned it into a project of projects that is both successful and miraculous. The philosophy that ‘it's never too late to improve’ and ‘the last word on nothing has been said’ allowed us to move forward with determination and resourcefulness, and with the support of remarkable artisans, to achieve a very unusual level of material and conceptual quality.
SOLO, PH. ©LUIS DÍAZ DÍAZ
CARRERAS MÚGICA, PH. ©ADRIÀ GOULA
MUNCH MUSEUM, PH. © EINAR ASLAKSEN
V.d.M. What can we expect in the coming years in relation to the dialogue between art and architecture?
J.H. Many museums are undergoing remarkable changes in their architecture in order to transcend the model of being mere containers of art that are visited in an orderly fashion by moving from room to room. Instead, they are being transformed into vital centres of discovery, encounter, reflection and discussion. In general, they seek to recode their metabolism, their public spaces and circulation, echo the multiplication of art formats, make their archives accessible (with the inevitable restrictions) and include more research, education and experimentation programmes. We call these transformations ‘typological corrections’ and they strike us as a very eloquent sign of things to come.
V.d.M. You often mentioned your interest in establishing the architectural foundations of the ‘museum we need.’ We also heard you argue that the museum is the new ritual space of 21st-century society. How can architecture respond to these new conditions?
J.H. The idea that museums should assume their status as ritual spaces comes from Dorothea von Hantelmann, who states that this ability to respond critically to established power had been flaunted by the theatre for centuries, but today it is the museum that is the place where we can express our complaints and project out into the world what we aspire to be as a society. It's worth noting that the guidelines for major museum competitions often call for a commitment to ‘the museum of the future,’ but it's very difficult to identify in the architecture of the proposals a critical and renewed position on what these institutions represent or would like to represent, and their transformation into architecture. The point is that the postulates of the declarations of these institutions change, but their architecture doesn’t change so much. It seems complicated for a museum to be inclusive, attentive to communities, ecological, anti-colonialist, transparent, educational and all the other adjectives that are considered necessary today, if it does not offer an architecture that departs from what we have seen repeated for 200 years.
V.d.M. Speaking of your latest museum in Argentina, it is small and located in a suburban area. MALBA is a new branch of the well-known MALBA in the city of Buenos Aires. How do you see this new institution, which has a strong relationship with its external space?
J.H. The points you mention are particularly important to us, as they respond to a need we have been advocating for years: small and medium-sized institutions that fill the huge gaps left by large art centres complete the cultural ecosystem by allowing large groups of people to approach culture in a closer and friendlier way before arriving at the large centres, where it is easy to feel overwhelmed.
J.H. Many museums are undergoing remarkable changes in their architecture in order to transcend the model of being mere containers of art that are visited in an orderly fashion by moving from room to room. Instead, they are being transformed into vital centres of discovery, encounter, reflection and discussion. In general, they seek to recode their metabolism, their public spaces and circulation, echo the multiplication of art formats, make their archives accessible (with the inevitable restrictions) and include more research, education and experimentation programmes. We call these transformations ‘typological corrections’ and they strike us as a very eloquent sign of things to come.
V.d.M. You often mentioned your interest in establishing the architectural foundations of the ‘museum we need.’ We also heard you argue that the museum is the new ritual space of 21st-century society. How can architecture respond to these new conditions?
J.H. The idea that museums should assume their status as ritual spaces comes from Dorothea von Hantelmann, who states that this ability to respond critically to established power had been flaunted by the theatre for centuries, but today it is the museum that is the place where we can express our complaints and project out into the world what we aspire to be as a society. It's worth noting that the guidelines for major museum competitions often call for a commitment to ‘the museum of the future,’ but it's very difficult to identify in the architecture of the proposals a critical and renewed position on what these institutions represent or would like to represent, and their transformation into architecture. The point is that the postulates of the declarations of these institutions change, but their architecture doesn’t change so much. It seems complicated for a museum to be inclusive, attentive to communities, ecological, anti-colonialist, transparent, educational and all the other adjectives that are considered necessary today, if it does not offer an architecture that departs from what we have seen repeated for 200 years.
V.d.M. Speaking of your latest museum in Argentina, it is small and located in a suburban area. MALBA is a new branch of the well-known MALBA in the city of Buenos Aires. How do you see this new institution, which has a strong relationship with its external space?
J.H. The points you mention are particularly important to us, as they respond to a need we have been advocating for years: small and medium-sized institutions that fill the huge gaps left by large art centres complete the cultural ecosystem by allowing large groups of people to approach culture in a closer and friendlier way before arriving at the large centres, where it is easy to feel overwhelmed.
"GABINETE", PH. © IMAGEN SUBLIMINAL
JUAN HERREROS, PH. © JAN KHUR
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