MATTER OF THINGS, A

The Spanish architect and urban planner Manuel de Sola-Morales has made successful interventions in urban landscapes from Antwerp to Trieste, Groningen to Porto, and from Barcelona to The Hague. For him a city does not consist of abstractions, but of concrete, tangible buildings and public spaces. By intervening - precisely and with great care - in this physical reality, with projects at the interface of architecture and urban planning, Sola-Morales effects changes in the city that transcend his work's physical or spatial dimensions. This monograph unites his oeuvre for the first time, documenting it extensively in word and image, with particular attention to larger and more important projects and realizations of his recent years. Alongside texts by Manuel de Sola-Morales himself, it includes a comprehensive essay by Columbia University's Kenneth Frampton.