In his new book Absolute Beginners, acclaimed Spanish architect Iñaki Ábalos explores forms of innovation in architecture. Drawing on diverse materials elaborated during the twenty years since the publication of his best-known book, The Good Life, Ábalos examines questions centered on how and why architectural creation – at least the kind that arouses the greatest cultural interest – is strongly linked to philosophical thought, especially to the essay and the aphorism. He guides us to an understanding why innovation – as happens in philosophy – is inextricably linked to a reflection on the past and to the emergence of new ways of appropriating old problems.

Absolute Beginners is a single essay written with effort and passion, made for the pure pleasure of composing a new and complex work and understanding the source materials as necessary fragments, while remaining open to adjustments, changes, and bridges between them. Ábalos organizes his materials like a piece of music into a cohesive composition, to the delight and insight of his readers.


Iñaki Ábalos is founding principal of Ábalos+Sentkiewicz Architects with offices in Boston, Madrid, and Shanghai. He has also been a Professor of Architectural Design and director of the Laboratorio de Técnicas y Paisajes Contemporáneos (LTPC) at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) since 2002, and Professor-in-Residence at Harvard Graduate School of Design since 2012.