Alberto Campo Baeza

Quid est ergo pulchrum?

Et quid est pulchritudo?

“Do we perchance love anything but the beautiful? What then is the beautiful? And what is beauty? What is it that allures and unites us to the things we love; for unless there were a grace and beauty in them, they could not possibly attract us to them?

Saint Augustine, Confessions. IV.13. 44

After many years working as an architect, teaching as a university professor and putting my ideas on paper, the reasons why I do my work, I must confess that what I truly seek with all my heart, with all my soul, relentlessly, is beauty.

Can an architect confess this so overtly? Can any creator state outright that what he is seeking is beauty? That is what poets and musicians and painters and sculptors do, what all artists do. Many of the academicians here today know that full well.

To state that beauty is the goal of Architecture could seem rather risky. But I am convinced that by achieving beauty in architecture we can achieve, with this “art with necessary reason” as the classics used to say, a happier place for mankind.

1st edition, November 2014
2nd edition, February 2015