Dialogues with Ignasi de Solà-Morales
Wednesday, March 13, 2002. Sala Foyer, Liceu - Carrer Sant Pau 7, Barcelona

The intellectual career of Ignasi de Solà-Morales combined research and professional committment, academic activity and passion for cities, architecture and thought. Organized as a series of independent platforms, his work constitutes a personal approach to architecture, which the purpose of these dialogues is to interpret and to celebrate.

In order to understand the scope of his work and contribute to its continuity, this symposia has been conceived as a series of dialogues on the main aspects of Ignasi de Solà-Morales's legacy in terms of the city, history, thought, architecture and writing.

History
History was one of Ignasi de Solà-Morales's main areas of research and academic work, and his task as a historian constituted the basis of his multidisciplinary research, in which he analysed the different historiographical legacies of the 20th century.

The City
The city may be interpreted as a network of multiple itineraries: the cities of the city. As a historian, as an architect and also as an untiring traveller, Ignasi de Solà-Morales constantly explored the complexity and great variety of urban phenomena with enthusiasm. It is in cities that architecture enters into dialogue and interacts with the widest possible diversity of situations.

Architecture
Despite the multiplicity of disciplines in which he worked, Ignasi de Solà-Morales was first and foremost an architect. His built oeuvre stands as a response to themes of especial conceptual complexity and constitutes a meeting of past and present, a meditation on the civic condition of architecture and a shining example of the architect's capacity for research and reflection.

Thought
A philosopher as well as an architect, Ignasi de Solà-Morales was one of the intellectuals who has been most successful in establishing a dialogue between these two disciplines. His writings often explore points of contact and mutual inspiration between thinking and the architectural debate.

Writing
Ignasi de Solà-Morales the writer is the author of a wide range of polycentric works, incisive texts and essays that epitomize an entire career devoted to research and passion for architecture and knowledge. In his writings, his voice can be heard with maximum intensity - it is the voice that inspires us and which we have set out to echo through these dialogues.