The book, of great teaching load, intends, as also The Built Idea intended in 1996, to analyze the architecture through the words and to explain the reasons why the author designs and builds. He explains this because, for him, the ideas behind the built forms the ones which transcend.
Introduction of Varia Architectonica by Alberto Campo Baeza
At my entry into the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, on November 30, 2014, many asked me about what I intended to do there, and my answer was always the same: shut up and listen. Be quiet for a long time, and listen carefully to others. Shut up and listen. For some time I have stuck a piece of paper next to my computer screen with these words: shut up, listen.
But being silence doesn't mean to stop thinking or writing or projecting. And so, here in this new book Varia Architectonica (2016), which is preceded The Built Idea (1996), Written 20 years ago!, Thinking with the Hands (2009), Principia Architectonica (2012), Poetica Architectonica (2014 ) and I want to be an architect (2015), many of the written and published texts were collected in this latter period.
And the intentions that I already had in the introductions of my previous books still stand. To be clear. The texts that are published together here today try to have the clarity that as a courtesy demanded philosopher Ortega. I want my writings and my work, always to have this clarity required by Ortega.
The order structure of those books is continued in this one, where together with the theoretical issues of architecture, regarding some architects and analyzing some works, various other texts are also published.
Some of the earlier books have already been translated into English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and even into Chinese. And these days I said yes to the Serbian translation. And in some of these languages they have already done several editions. When this has happened, besides giving thanks to heaven, I could not help but to think that my intention, a bit "ortegian", of being clear,has been fulfilled because I don't think anyone would read what that person can not understand. And it makes me think that these texts, with a large teaching load, are useful for those who read and study them. Hopefully, as I wish, also leads them to be happier.
And I repeat here what I already wrote in the introduction to the first edition of The Built Idea in 1996, that all these writings are an attempt to analyze the architecture in the light of the words, explain the reasons why and with what I understand that architecture should be done. The reasons that I project and build. Because the history of architecture, far from being a history of forms, is basically a history of ideas, of constructed ideas. The forms are destroyed over time, but the ideas remain, they are eternal.
