Visiting scholar Carlos Sambricio presents his research:

For some years (architects being conscious of the existing conceptual crisis), the recourse to history—and the critical look at the past—became in Spain, as in other European countries, a common reference. For a few, it consisted in repeating mimetically lost references, literally repeating—like some did with Villa Adriana—examples from the past; others, on the other hand, deepened the theoretical debate by thinking about the morphological and typological analysis. Most of these reflections were left as abstract exercises, of indisputable value of course, but without integration in everyday practice. This seminar will expose how history has established rules, differently understood in each case, to develop three projects of particular interest by Rafael Moneo.

Carlos Sambricio is Professor of History of Architecture and Urbanism at the ETS Arquitectura of Madrid. He received doctoral degrees from the Universidad Complutense (El Pensamiento Arquitectónico en la España de la Segunda Mitad del Siglo XVIII) and the École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales de Paris (Madrid, Architecture et Urbanisme, 1925-1945).

He is the author, amongst others, of La arquitectura española de la Ilustración (1986) Territorio y ciudad en la España Ilustrada (1991), Cuando se quiso resucitar la arquitectura (1984), De la Ciudad Ilustrada a la primera mitad del siglo XX (1999), and Madrid, vivienda y urbanismo. 1900-1960 (2004). He was a recipient of the EHESS of Paris and the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst), and has also been Visiting Scholar at the Getty Center of Humanities in Los Angeles and at Harvard University, a Gast Profesor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HFBK, University of Fine Arts) of Hamburg, and a Profesore a contrato in the Facultad de Architettura del Politecnico di Milano.

Carlos Sambricio was a Visiting Scholar at the CCA in 2010.