Benedetta Tagliabue was born in Milan and graduated from the University of Venice in 1989. In 1991 she joined Enric Miralles’ studio where she eventually became a partner.
Benedetta Tagliabue work with Miralles, whom she married, includes a number of high profile buildings and projects in Barcelona: Parque Diagonal Mar (1997-2002), Head Office Gas Natural (1999-2006) and the Market and quarter Santa Caterina (1996-2005), as well as projects across Europe, including the School of Music in Hamburg (1997-2000) and the City Hall in Utrecht (1996-2000).
In 1998, the partnership won the competition to design the new Scottish Parliament building and despite Miralles’ premature death in 2000, Benedetta Tagliabue took leadership of the team as joint Project Director and the Parliament was successfully completed in 2004, winning several awards.
Benedetta Tagliabue won the competition for the new design of Hafencity Harbor in Hamburg , Germany, for a subway train station in Naples and for the Spanish Pavilion for Expo Shanghai 2010 among others.
Today
Under the direction of Benedetta Tagliabue the Miralles-Tagliabue-EMBT studio works with architectural projects, open spaces, urbanism, rehabilitation and exhibitions, trying to conserve the spirit of the Spanish and Italian artisan architectural studio tradition which espouses collaboration rather than specialization.
Their architectural philosophy is dedicating special attention to context.
Benedetta Tagliabue has written for several architectural magazines and has taught at, amongst other places, the University of architecture ETSAB in Barcelona. Benedetta Tagliabue has lectured in many international architectural Forums as, for example, the RIBA, the Architectural Association and Bartlett School in, London, the Berlage Institut in Amsterdam, and in USA, China and South America.
She has exhibited in Brazil,Venezuela, the United States, France, Italy and of course Spain, using these exhibitions not only to explore her own architecture but also its relationships with other disciplines such us landscape, urbanisma and fashion. In Skin and Bones
(New York 2006) she studied the connections between architecture (shelter) and fashion (wrapping for a body).
She has received the Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Napier University (2004), The RIBA Stirling Prize 2005, the Centenary Medal from Edinburgh Architectural Association and the 2005 Spanish National Architecture Prize ‘Manuel de la Dehesa’, for the Scottish Parliament building. She was speaker at the 2006 RIBA International Conference in Barcelona and an outspoken Stirling Prize judge in 2009. In February 2010 she will be awarded with RIBA's International Fellowships for the particular contribution as a non-UK architect she has made to architecture.
She has recently won the World Architectural Festival Award 2009 within Category Top Future Project for Shanghai Pavilion.
