They say that we are what we eat, but fundamentally, we are what others thought before us and we make our own or not… Without knowing what those who preceded us did, we will hardly find our place or serve as a guide to those who will succeed us. Hence the always renewed interest in revisiting the masters… And, for that, nothing like travel, direct contact with their works. Because the works speak to us… it is enough to know how to hear, even if it is very noisy. Because those visits will be the guide for when we, in turn, face the arduous and exciting task of projecting and building the world. “The stones give us back the affection you put on them,” said Coderch.

The 20th century was a break with precedents, even though, as architects, we are always answering the same questions. Write that something remains … Words (and tweets and posts) are blown away by the wind and other current news, in which the urgent often takes over the important. This book aims to share important things. Why is a book above so many other things? To help us be something more than a thing… Reading is the journey of the poor, only that reading allows us to travel to times that no longer exist.

Octavio Mestre understands the exercise of the profession as a three-legged stool in which construction, teaching-research and editing-communication intermingle, creating synergies between them… His 150 works in various countries (and many more studies or lost competitions), about twenty books published, numerous articles and participation in workshops and congresses, the digital magazine t18 -from which a good part of these texts come out- and several thousand students, in a dozen countries on both sides of the Atlantic, give an account of it. All this approached with the spirit of the one who is always beginning and understanding that every new book, every trip, every building is always the first book, trip or building. In his own words, he is “aware that, after 35 years of professional practice, there is less than what has already been experienced, and one must select very well what remains to be said, do only the works that allow him to explain how much one wants, within a journey that one aspires to be coherent, good and if not, at least worthy…