AP 164: Ábalos and Herreros: Selected by Kersten Geers and David Van Severen, Juan José Castellón González, Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, with an interpretation in photography by Stefano Graziani

Iñaki Ábalos and Juan Herreros established the renowned architec­tural firm Ábalos & Herreros in Madrid in 1984. At the time, fol­lowing the end of the Franco regime, architects were valued more for their technical ability than for their contributions to theoretical research. In this context, Ábalos and Herreros’s melding of design with a range of publications and curatorial projects presented a remarkable challenge to assumptions about the role of an architect.

In 2012, the Canadian Centre for Architecture obtained the Ábalos & Herreros archive, which contains documents related to more than 160 projects. The material comprises sketches, slides, models, col­lages, and drawings. The archive presents a compelling opportunity to reconstruct Ábalos and Herreros’s planning and design process. Each of the book’s three contributors—two of whom worked with Ábalos and Herreros—approaches the archive with specific questions, and their essays explore topics including the architects’ fascination with industrial architecture, their capacity to construct a hybrid materiality without recourse to building technology as language, and their innova­tive visions for landscape architecture.

While many have written about the work of Ábalos and Herreros, previous books have been based mainly on their built projects and on­going research. Ábalos & Herreros Selected by Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Juan José Castellón and SO–IL is the first book to draw on the firm’s archive to offer a new take on this important architectural practice.