Architecture and Transversalities

No great architect has ever thought solely in terms of architecture. Vitruvius already noted this in the 1st century: the profession demands a perspective that cuts across disciplines, one capable of reading a poem, listening to a symphony or understanding a philosophical argument. Architecture and Transversalities revives that tradition and brings it up to date.

This book brings together twelve essays compiled under the scientific direction of Javier Poyatos Sebastián, José Luis Baró Zarzo and Guillermo Guimaraens Igual. The premise is as old as Vitruvius and as urgent as the present: architecture cannot be conceived in isolation. It requires philosophy, art, music, literature and design. What the editors call transdisciplinarity is not here a terminological fad but a methodological conviction that permeates every page.

The book opens with Joaquín Arnau Amo challenging the architect lulled by the screens and icons of the digital world, calling for a return to the immediate environment, to the tangible, to the built. It is a text of an uncomfortable honesty that sets the tone for all that follows. From there, the book unfolds a journey ranging from the phenomenological analysis of place (Mileto and Vegas) to the intersections between food and architecture (Matarredona), from concrete as a poetic language in Chillida and GO.DB. (Palomares and Roig) to the conception of space through music (Baró), from the Cabanyal as interpreted by Blasco Ibáñez (Pastor Villa) to the genealogy of modern design (Bravo) and the ephemeral architecture of Petra Blaisse (Muñoz).

The result is an unorthodox yet coherent map of what architecture can learn when it steps beyond its own disciplinary boundaries. A necessary book, written with rigour and without resorting to gratuitous technical jargon, which deserves readers beyond the university sphere for which it is naturally intended.