Description

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Iñaki Ábalos presents the quintessence of his thinking about architecture and the future of the trade.
 
In his new book Absolute Beginners, acclaimed Spanish architect Iñaki Ábalos explores forms of innovation in architecture. Drawing on diverse materials elaborated during the twenty years since the publication of his best-known book, The Good Life, Ábalos examines questions centered on how and why architectural creation—at least the kind that arouses the greatest cultural interest—is strongly linked to philosophical thought, especially to the essay and the aphorism. He guides us to an understanding of why innovation—as happens in philosophy—is inextricably linked to reflection on the past and to the emergence of new ways of appropriating old problems.

Absolute Beginners is a single essay written with effort and passion, made for the pure pleasure of composing a new and complex work and understanding the source materials as necessary fragments while remaining open to adjustments, changes, and bridges between them. Ábalos organizes his materials like a piece of music into a cohesive composition, to the delight and insight of his readers.

About the Author

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Iñaki Ábalos is founding principal of Ábalos+Sentkiewicz Architects with offices in Boston, Madrid, and Shanghai. He is professor of architectural design and director of the Laboratorio de Técnicas y Paisajes Contemporáneos (LTPC) at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) and professor-in-residence at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Praise For…

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"The questions posed by the author are as classic as they are original. . . Although more fragmentary than the author himself suggests in the preface to the book, the essays in Absolute Beginners offer interesting insights. And they reiterate a central concept in the Spanish architect’s production: (high quality) architectural creation is inextricably linked to a reflection on the past."
— Abitare