A Matter of Things

This monograph brings together the work of the Spanish architect and urban planner Manuel de Solà-Morales in book form for the first time. The publication concentrates on his most important projects and realizations of recent years. Solà-Morales has achieved successful interventions in the urban landscape in many places in Europe: from Antwerp to Trieste, from Groningen to Porto, and from Barcelona to The Hague. For Solà-Morales the city does not consist of abstractions, but of concrete, tangible things. His projects could be regarded as an urban architecture, at the interface of architecture and urban planning. By intervening in this physical reality in a precise manner, with a building, with public space, or sometimes with nothing more than the layout of a public space, but always with concrete things, Solà-Morales effects changes in the city that often transcend the physical or spatial dimensions of the intervention.