Books
Visions of Architects
An architect has to have a strong sense of self – a creative ego made of tastes and phobias – to be of any worth, but this personality often ends up in blatant hostility and rivalry with others in the profession. Not the case of Moneo. His selfhood, while remaining competitive, has always come with curiosity and even honest admiration for the work of his contemporaries.
This extraordinary collection of 70+ texts by Moneo shows that the Navarre master’s critiques from the ‘I’ angle have been persistent (six decades of critical work) and done in the tones called for by the format of the moment (from the review to the laudatio), without such decorum diminishing the analytical lucidity and intellectual inquisitiveness with which he has always regarded the oeuvre of colleagues.
Though miscellaneous, this bunch of texts, presented chronologically (1961-2021), is not an anthology (it offers not a selection, but all of Moneo’s writings on Spanish architects), so is free of an anthologist’s criteria. In exchange, it is Moneo himself who emerges as the protagonist: preceded by paragraphs he has written ad hoc, the texts inquire into ‘others’ but also into his own self from the prism of his masters (especially Oíza), his teachings (especially in Barcelona), his disciples (Martínez Lapeña, Cruz & Ortiz), the rare birds that came his way (Miralles), the books he took interest in, and everything in his time that has intrigued him. A decision (turning criticism into intellectual autobiography) which in this case (prerogative of masters) we are glad to endorse.
