When tweets mark the rhythm of a planet overflowing with information and paced no longer by the passing of the seasons, but rather by the periodic presentations of the Iphone, knowing what or who will be able to pass the test of time becomes a critical exercise of extreme difficulty. In this book by Campo Baeza, written during his stay at Columbia University in the 2010-2011 academic year, the architect turns his gaze to the invariables of the profession to give the younger generations criteria with which to segregate the grain from the chaff, architecture of timeless value from the most ephemeral novelty.

Through nine essential concepts and a coda - ideas, precision, light, horizon, memory, stone, structure, nature, time and intensity - Campo Baeza speaks both of his own works and of the new and old constructions that move him, distilling through concise words and clear examples the mechanisms that make architecture a poetic work capable of enduring in memory. And he does so in the awareness that digging into the foundations does not necessarily imply always looking back, neither in substance nor in form. For this reason, the English version of this book - translated by Columbia professor Francis R. Hittinger - lacks footnotes and illustrations in the traditional sense, which have been replaced by QR codes to immerse the reader in much larger worlds: image, music and video are thus made available to a reader who will have to reach for his smartphone or tablet if he wants to take advantage of the full potential of this book.