By Jose Luis Mateo and Arnau Pascual

Josep Lluis Mateo is one of Spain's leading architects and one of Europe's most influential intellectuals. He runs a firm called mateoarquitectura in Barcelona, which has designed buildings in many countries such as Spain, Portugal, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Alongside his work as guest lecturer, Mateo was Professor of Design at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich from 2002 to 2014. Mateo's standing as a pacesetter in the international intellectual discourse about the future of architecture is closely tied to the journal Quaderns d'Arquitectura i Urbanisme, which has appeared in Catalan, Spanish and English since 1985 and of which he was editor-in-chief between 2002 and 2014.