Born in Valladolid, where his grandfather was an architect, but from the age of two, he lived in Cádiz where he saw the Light.
He is a Professor in the Madrid School of Architecture, ETSAM, where he has been a tenured Professor for more than 25 years. He has taught at the ETH in Zurich and the EPFL in Lausanne as well as the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the Kansas State University, and at the CUA University in Washington.
He has given many lectures all over the world, and has received many awards like the Torroja for his Caja Granada or the Award of the UPM University for his Excellence in Teaching. In 2013 he has been awarded the Heinrich Tessenow Gold Medal, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the International Award Architecture in Stone in Verona, and the RIBA International Fellowship 2014 of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Also in 2014 he was elected Full Member to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando of Spain. In 2015, he has been awarded with the BigMat 2015 in Berlin and the International Prize of Spanish Architecture (PAEI 2015).