En Memòria de Manuel Ribas i Piera

Abstract

Manuel Ribas was an all-rounder: architect, lawyer, Professor of Urban Design at the ETSAB, bibliophile, disseminator and inveterate traveller. A connoisseur of European culture, he was in- fluenced by Gaston Bardet, whom he met in the 1950s, and whose "culturalist" approach to urbanism he adopted as opposed to the prevailing doctrine of functionalism. Drawing on the shared experiences of the two professors in some 20 journeys, this tribute presents some of the issues that most keenly interested Ribas Piera. One was his passion for landscape, as a constant throughout his long career, recounted in the discovery of a graveyard, a stroll around some gardens or in his contemplation of a viaduct across a valley. Then there was his natural intellectual curiosity in the history, architecture and urbanism of the towns and cities he visited: from Goteborg to Rotterdam, from classical Greece to Iran, and from the cities of Germany to the Tarn valley.