1939 - 2012

As author of Barcelona’s seafront transformation – through the refurbishment of the Moll de la Fusta – as well as of the Illa Diagonal, in collaboration with Rafael Moneo, Manuel de Solà-Morales i Rubió had a key influence on the urbanistic changes carried out in the city in preparation for the Olympic Games of 1992. Grandson, son and brother of architects committed to the Catalonian capital (his father was dean of the Barcelona Architects Association from 1954 to 1964) and disciple of Ludovico Quaroni in Rome and José Luis Sert at Harvard, Solà-Morales was a chair professor at the Barcelona School of Architects, where he founded the Urbanism laboratory and the magazine UR, a major organ for the spreading of new ideas about the city. His profound, fruitful conceptions of urbanism, multidisciplinary in bent and highly sensitized to the notion of public space, were recognized worldwide, leading him to work in many European cities, from Berlin to Naples through Antwerp, with projects as prominent as the public space of the Gröningen dunes or the Atlantic boardwalk of Porto.