1929-2016

An architect of clear social orientations, Luis Miquel Suárez-Inclán was born in Madrid in 1929. After finishing his studies in 1957, he went to Paris. Finding there an alternative to the “humbug and hillbillyish” modernity of Francoist Madrid, he acquired a civic and critical commitment which he managed to maintain throughout his career. It is reflected in exemplary buildings, among them the San Juan Evangelista and Isabel de España student halls in Madrid (both built in 1966 in collaboration with Antonio Viloria), the El Taray social housing developments in Segovia’s old quarter (with Viloria and Joaquín Aracil), and more recently the CENER headquarters near Pamplona (built with César Ruiz-Larrea in 2004), all of these works rough in form, sensible in typology, and ambitious technologically. Miquel was also an insightful analyst of his time, the author of easy-to-read texts that were polemic in tone, such as La ruina de la ciudad-negocio, and he had the rare capacity to direct teams of architects, both in private practice and in work for the Administration, during Spain’s period of democracy-building, when projects of social architects were undertaken en masse.