I recently returned to Olot, a small town north of Barcelona and the long-time base of RCR Arquitectes. Since the late 1980s, the practice has shaped the town through a series of carefully crafted, small-scale interventions, often celebrated as exemplary fusions of architecture and landscape. Tossols-Basil Athletics Track is perhaps the most widely praised.

Set within a forest at the town’s edge, the track dissolves conventional boundaries. The running lanes sit directly among trees, while rocks and vegetation remain in the centre. There are no grandstands—only light, skeletal retaining walls for informal seating. Here, sport is not driven by efficiency or spectacle, but recast as a cultural landscape. In contrast to the over-designed language of many contemporary sports facilities, this restraint feels refreshing.

Yet the project reveals a more complex reality. Despite professional acclaim, it has been widely criticised by local residents. The apparent “integration” with nature is, in fact, highly curated—a controlled image of landscape that reads more as a stage for architectural discourse than as an everyday public facility. The preserved rocks and trees limit the use of the central field, making it unsuitable for common activities such as football. For residents, it falls short of practical expectations: usability, maintenance, and year-round functionality.

RCR’s work here embodies their characteristic poetics and restraint, but also exposes a recurring tension. When form and atmosphere take precedence in public projects, architecture risks becoming a refined illusion of daily life, rather than a structure that genuinely supports it.