Javier Rui-Wamba. Foto cortesía de Esteyco

The civil engineer Javier Rui-Wamba, founder of Esteyco and creator of its foundation, died in Barcelona on 10 July. In the course of a third of a century, Fundación Esteyco has shown how engineering can also be a branch of humanism. Architects, proud to see their discipline firmly implanted in the larger context of culture, have frequently regarded engineering and engineers from an exclusively technical prism, and this has caused innumerable clashes. For their part, engineers often judge architecture as an activity excessively polluted by its artistic dimension, and in this perception lies the seed of no less numerous misunderstandings of both a professional and a personal nature. Fundación Esteyco has been instrumental in providing a space in which the two fields are subjected to the same criteria of scientific rigor, literary excellence, and visual beauty, for which architects and engineers alike are indebted and grateful to the institution and its founder.