Manuel Valls Vergés
- Birthdate
- 1912
- Nationality
- Spanish
- Occupation
- Architect
The architect Manuel Valls Vergés was born in Barcelona on February 3, 1912. His father was a doctor and he originally wanted to be too but in 1929, as a first year student in medical school, he visited the Barcelona International Exhibition and saw the Mies Van der Rohe pavilion: "Seeing the new materials and the beautiful things that could be done", he then decided to become an architect.
He graduated as an architect in 1940. A year later, he set up his studio with Jose Antonio Coderch. This partnership lasted until the 1960s, when they were part of the "first generation postwar." Its initial architectural phase was mainly characterized by the construction of small houses on the coast of Catalonia. The simple shapes and the whitewashed walls would reach their ultimate expression in the house Ugalde, near Barcelona, in 1951. This extremely simple construction is one of the most admired works of Spanish architecture of the last fifty years. For Manuel Valls Vergés, luxury goes through the quality of construction
In 1960, he received the FAD Architecture Prize and began teaching at the Barcelona School of Architecture.
In 1982, he received the C.O.A.C. (Catalan Society of Architects), and died in 2000. He was buried in the Arenys de Mar cemetery, where he had been the city's architect for 23 years.
