Jesús María Aparicio Guisado expounds here his conception of architecture by exploring the notion of the wall in four major buildings through drawing and words.
The author focuses his research on the wall concept, using analytical sketches to explore four major works in the history of architecture: the Alhambra, Palladio's Villa la Rotonda, the Monastery of Saint-Laurent-de-l'Escurial and Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House.
With this book, Jesús María Aparicio Guisado intends to demonstrate that, in architecture, the wall is not just a building element. It is an architectural concept, in the sense that it contains architectural intentions and visions that are the material synthesis of ideas.
The object of this book is not simply the history of architecture, architectural theory or architectural practice, but architecture as such. Architecture is born, like the wall, from the encounter between idea and material. This essay aims to create a bridge between these two poles through the question of the wall: an object that is at once abstract and a real physical presence.
Jesús Aparicio (born 1960) is a Spanish architect. His work and reflection focus on the fusion of thinking, teaching and building, encompassing these three capacities as a whole.
Edited by Claudia Mion.
Presented by Kenneth Frampton.
Foreword by Simon Rodriguez-Pagès and Emmanuelle Sarrazin.
Translated from the Spanish by Magali Chermette, Sidney Lathuille, Juliette Lemerle (original title: El muro, Biblioteca Nueva, 2006).
