selgascano was established in Madrid in 1998. It is a small atelier and intends to remain so. They have worked with a wide variety of projects keeping always nature at the core of the program. Its work is focused on research into the construction process, which is treated as an ongoing process of `listening´ to the largest possible number of elements involved, from manufacture to installation. Selgascano avoids the use of games and mechanisms that lead to disciplinary issues and strives to seek beauty that is comprehensible to any human being.
They tend not to give lectures or classes in order to focus intensely on their projects, although they were involved with the MIT (2013-14) in a short-term extension of the studio´s main concern: an intense search for new outlets for nature using artificial means, applying technologies borrowed from other fields that are rarely mixed with architecture. All of this is linked to the necessary aim of making architecture lose ground to nature once again, minimizing its presence and reducing its role to the creation of opportunities for new types of nature.
In 2015 they were commissioned to build the Serpentine Pavilion in Hyde Park (London). In 2016, they designed a pavilion in Cognac, and in 2018, they displayed their installation for Triennale Brugge from May through Sept 2018.
They have exhibited at the MOMA in NY, the Guggenheim in NY, the Venice Biennale, the Chicago Architectural Biennal, the GA Gallery in Tokyo, The MOT (Contemporary art museum of Tokyo), the Design Museum of London, the Akademie der Kunste in Berlín, the Tin Sheds Gallery in Sydney and the MIT in Boston.
In 2013 they have won the Kunstpreis (Art prize) that gives the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin. Also in the same 2013 they won the “Architects of the Year” prize given by the German Design Council in Munich and in 2019 they were announced as finalists for the Mies Van der Rohe Award.