Oh, Susana! by Manuel Ocaña unfolds as a rich, intelligent, and suggestive dialogue between the architect and the “new builder” through WhatsApp, filled with architectural diagrams and YouTube tutorials. At the same time, it offers an introspective narrative—with echoes of Carrère, Bobin, or de Waal—where life memories and personal eccentricities intertwine with film scenes, architectural works, and literary fragments.
It's hard not to be captivated by Manuel Ocaña's agile writing, suggestive in its references, and full of architectural ingenuity, architectural culture, and technique, especially the latter, which he aptly displays. And yes, a book with far more ingenuity, knowledge, and technique than many achieve after teaching and compiling lectures over six years of study. I'd even say more: a book, a single text, that accumulates more intelligence than the dozens of articles that many professors submit for their official accreditation and that no one reads.
“A book as charged with intelligence as it is with tenderness, marked by a sharp, refined, and deeply personal perspective. A tribute to the encounter between distant worlds (the city dweller and the rural inhabitant, the academic and the craftswoman, the thinker and the maker), where each is transformed by the other.”
Jesús Carrasco.
¡Oh, Susana! Una novela técnica by Manuel Ocaña.
In this epistemological short circuit, Ocaña explores, beyond what architecture is for him, what it is that we do to become who we are. It leaves the question of whether a project should begin with a single brick or, on the contrary, be inaugurated with a farewell.
"I called Esperanza the week after the meeting and returned the call, requesting three conditions to maintain the context of the challenge:
1. The work will be carried out by Susana. Without rushing and without help.
2. Materials available within a fifteen-minute drive will be used.
3. There will be no in-person site visits or a preliminary project. Communication will be exclusively via WhatsApp.
Esperanza said yes, with the request that I come and inspect the work at the end. She gave me Susana's contact information. Her profile picture looked like her wedding photo. Her WhatsApp status was "I couldn't be happier."
The book now being presented is in its second edition. The first hardcover sold out in just a few weeks after its release early last summer, in 2024, becoming a collector's edition.
A new paperback edition is highly recommended.
