Barcelona celebrates Rafael Moneo, the "thinking" architect

BarcelonaArchitect Rafael Moneo spent ten very important years of his academic life at the UPC, and has built some of his most outstanding works in Barcelona, such as L'Illa Diagonal and L'Auditori. The esteem his Catalan colleagues hold for him is also profound, as could be seen in the full house at the presentation of the ambitious intellectual biography of Moneo, the work of fellow architect Carmen Díez, at the Pati de les Dones of the CCCB, within the Biennial of Thought. The editor of Acantilado, Sandra Ollo, pointed out that the event was not the presentation of Rafael Moneo, Building Ideas (1954-2024), but the "celebration" of the book. The list of established architects who did not want to miss it is also striking. Among the public were Beth Galí, Esteve Bonell, Elías Torres, Ramon Sanabria, Francesc Pernas, Lluís Domènech Girbau, Juli Capella, Jaume Bach and Joan Busquets. Also the filmmaker Poldo Pomés, author of a documentary about the Navarrese architect.

Carmen Díez worked at Rafael Moneo's studio between 1996 and 2001, and currently serves as a professor of architectural composition at the University of Zaragoza. The book is the result of more than a hundred meetings she held with Moneo over the last six years. "It was not enough to order the events chronologically –she says–, I had to capture that pulse of vital restlessness that characterizes Rafael Moneo: the critical spirit; the capacity to always demand more of himself and others; the dedication to the work and the intensity with which he commits himself to everything he does; the generosity; the ethical sense; the strength of will; the courage. None of these attributes appear explicitly in the book, but they are there implicitly." "The lesson that has left the deepest impression on me is understanding that, for Moneo, this way of conceiving architecture and being an architect is inseparable from his way of being in the world," states Díez.

For Díez, Moneo is a "thinker" who, for about seventy years, has understood the world through architecture and has contributed to making it a little better. "The city continuously emerges in his reflections not as the stage where buildings are situated, but as a reality that is built over time and that offers architects a kind of repository where they can find reasons to intervene. And it is significant that this attention to the city coexists in Rafael Moneo with another equally firm conviction: that architecture is produced closely linked to the resolution of concrete problems, to specific situations, what he likes to call 'the contingent'", explains the author.

At the closing of the event, Moneo pointed out that with this book he is settling a debt with himself: "I would like this book to declare the respect that I continue to feel for those who were my teachers, and that it might manifest the luck that it has been for me to teach in so many schools, in Madrid, Barcelona and Cambridge, and to have personally known so many colleagues… In a few words, to have been an exceptional witness to the evolution of the recent history of architecture", said the architect. "I have had to live through the years in which the principles of the Modern Movement have been called into question, and I feel that it is mandatory to contribute to explaining the paradigm shift that has occurred", concluded Moneo.