On the heels of what has been a rare and late outpouring of publications on Jose Rafael Moneo—mostly by Moneo himself—arrives Rafael Moneo: Building, Teaching, Writing. This plethora of publications subverts the authors’ surmised assessment of the absence hitherto of a comprehensive published effort to assess Moneo’s contributions to the academy and practice. Although Building, Teaching, Writing is a wonderful addition to this canon and amply contributes novel biographical and material insights, Moneo’s three most recent publications taken together deliver an unrivaled insight into his work; they also argue more convincingly for twenty-first century relevance than this more circumspect tome strives to impart. By Moneo’s own introduction, Remarks on 21 Works (Monacelli Press, 2010) is a long-gestated monograph, though its pairing projects to new and retooled theoretical essays, expanding its scope to a theoretical and pedagogical manifesto; Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects (MIT Press, 2004) delves just as much into Moneo’s deep scholarship and theoretical tenets as those of the eight architects it critiques; and Rafael Moneo: International Portfolio 1985–2012 (Edition Axel Menges, 2013)—an unself-conscious glossy opening of project vaults—provides rare insight into projects rarely published such as the Beirut Souks that should expand “the referent canon” if critically examined.al age.

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