In his new book Absolute Beginners, acclaimed Spanish architect Iñaki Ábalos explores forms of innovation in architecture. Drawing on diverse materials elaborated during the 20 years since the publication of his best-known book, The Good Life, Ábalos examines questions centred on how and why architectural creation — at least the kind that arouses the greatest cultural interest — is strongly linked to philosophical thought, especially to the essay and the aphorism. He guides us to an understanding why innovation — as happens in philosophy — is inextricably linked to a reflection on the past and to the emergence of new ways of appropriating old problems.

Absolute Beginners is a single essay written with effort and passion, made for the pure pleasure of composing a new and complex work and understanding the source materials as necessary fragments, while remaining open to adjustments, changes, and bridges between them. Ábalos organises his materials like a piece of music into a cohesive composition, to the delight and insight of his readers.