The chairman of the jury was Jordi Garcés, winner of the 1991 FAD  Prize for the Vall d'Hebron Pavilion, and the other members were Lluís-Xavier Comerón, dean of the Catalan College of Architects; Joan Morey, dean of the Official College of Architects of the Balearic Islands; Fernando Marzá, architect, member of the Catalan College of Architects; Miquel Vadell, architect and manager of the competitions office of the Official College of Architects of the Balearic Islands (COAIB); Marta Vall-Llossera, architect and director of the COAIB School; Marta Malé, architect and acting director of the Catalan College of Advanced Architecture; Daniel Giralt-Miracle, art critic and historian; and Àlex Susanna, assistant director of the Institut Ramon Llull. Anna Giralt, management coordinator of the Institut Ramon Llull, was the secretary. 
At the presentation of the winning project, the Catalan government councillor for Culture Ferran Mascarell said that its presence at the Architecture Biennale "expresses the commitment of Catalan culture to Catalan architecture and its international promotion. Architecture is a genuine expression of Catalan culture. Internationalise is not an aesthetic expression; it is a profound expression of the need for our sectors to be connected to the international stage".
The director of the IRL Vicenç Villatoro said that "this is a landmark project for the Institut Ramon Llull, since it brings together some of its essential aims by keeping up its tenacity in appearing on well-lit international stages". For his part, assistant director Àlex Susanna recalled that a total of 45 projects were submitted for the competition and emphasised the unanimity of the jury when selecting Jordi Badia and Félix Arranz' work as the winner. Susanna also announced that the Catalonia and Balearic Islands Pavilion "will be about 350 square metres, in Via Garibaldi, between the Giardini and the Arsenale, a very busy area during the Biennale".
Jordi Garcés, president of the jury, announced that "we focused on the work of eight young firms, and therefore on rather incipient works following, as they warn themselves, their own inclinations. And from there, going from the particular to the general, they formulate their thesis".
Jordi Badia said that with the project "we try to explain that here we have a new way of doing architecture, which also links up with a tradition that works with enormous respect for the environment and the user. This way of doing things is also to be found in international examples and that is why we want to place our home-grown architecture in the international debate". Félix Arranz explained that their thesis starts from "a choice of apparently simple structures that are the product of what the architecture schools in our country have accomplished and show how, from highly sophisticated professional systems and tools, that simplicity can be achieved".
Winning project for the competition to take part in the Venice Architecture Biennale:
Vogadors/Architectural Rowers
Catalan & Balearic Threads: hard materiality for a permeable architecture
This project highlights the importance of an austere architecture based on respect for the environment and the user. To carry it out the team of curators drew their inspiration from the Mediterranean Sea, which both divides and unites Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, and takes as its starting point a phrase of Jorge Oteiza which says:
"Whoever goes forward creating something new does so like a rower, moving forward but rowing backward, looking back towards the past, to what already exists in order to reinvent its keys".
The aim is to show that this kind of architecture is not just an automatic response to the economic crisis; it is a cultural and aesthetic tendency that links up with a whole intellectual, technical and social tradition of Catalan and Balearic architecture, which stayed alive even when the international context was calling for formal and expressive paths. It also connects with international tendencies which had already warned of the excesses of certain kinds of architecture in recent years. Now it is acknowledged to be ideal thanks to a contemporary sensibility that has grown out of the current economic and ecological situation.
At the same time the curators wanted to fuel the international debate about this tendency and integrate Catalonia and the Balearic Islands as one of the centres of cultural and intellectual production of a fully contemporary architecture.
Team of curators: 
Félix Arranz (La Rioja, 1961). Architect and editor. 
In recent years he has been involved in a number of tasks promoting architecture. Among them we might mention his recent work as director of the XI Spanish Architecture and Town Planning Biennial (2011), as director of the Higher Technical Architecture School at San Jorge University, Zaragoza (2009-2011) and as editor and director of SCALAE (since 2003).
Jordi Badia (Barcelona, 1961). Architect and editor. 
BAAS director of architecture studies, article writer for the journal ARA, lecturer at ETSAB (since 2001) and ESARQ-UIC (2009-2010) and editor of the HIC architecture blog (since 2009).
 
The Architecture Biennale
The Venice Architecture Biennale has been held independently since 1980 and is a prestigious international reference point. It is organised every two years and alternates with the Art Biennale.
For the 13th Biennale, which will be held from 29 August to 25 November 2012, the directors of the event have appointed the distinguished architect David Chipperfield as curator.
This year's theme is Common Ground, proposed by Chipperfield with the aim of paying tribute to a thriving, interconnected architectural culture which investigates common intellectual and physical territories. The curator also wants the projects taking part to reflect the concerns, influences and intentions shared by architects studios internationally.       
53 countries took part in the 2010 Architecture Biennale, with 40 Eventi Collaterali. In total, 170,000 people visited the show, a record and a 31% increase in attendance over 2008.
The Institut Ramon Llull, aware of the importance and international impact of this event, will be there representing Catalonia and the Balearic Islands in order to support their architecture at a difficult time for the sector. The IRL project will be presented as part of the Eventi Collaterali at the Venice Architecture Biennale.