This book presents the work of the Spanish architect Julio Salcedo in a series of built and speculative projects. Salcedos houses, early achievements that stunned both academic and professional circles with their fresh originality and precocious sophistication, are presented along with unpublished competition proposals for large-scale buildings. The projects varying locales, scales and ambitions all demonstrate a commitment to architecture as a conceptual medium with the capacity to tackle complex ideas as well as a material practice of transforming, worldly practicality. Each is a built essay that works through architectural problems of form, construction and material to achieve thought-provoking resolutions of a difficult yet satisfying beauty. The book complements a thorough graphic documentation of selected projects with Salcedos own writings and critical essays by Luis Rojo and Ivan Rupnik. They situate the projects in Salcedos multi-faceted conceptual and professional world and place them in the context of the constellation of ideas that currently shape and propel the field. ...Julio Salcedos ongoing interest in landscape and urban design has informed his architectural work, producing a rich, invested and responsible practice. In all, I believe his work illustrates his ambition to inform even modest architectural projects with broader issues present in contemporary practice, something that I believe speaks highly for his intense and profound interest in design. Rafael Moneo