Manuel Valls Vergés was born in Barcelona on 3 February, 1912. His father was a doctor and he originally wanted to be one too but in 1929, as a first-year student in the school of medicine, he visited the Barcelona International Expo and saw the Mies Van der Rohe pavilion: “Upon seeing the new materials and the beautiful things that could be made”, he decided to become an architect. He received his degree in architecture in 1940. A year later, he set up his studio with Jose Antonio Coderch.

This partnership would last until the 60s, as they became part of the “first post-war generation”. His initial architectural phase was characterised primarily by constructing small, single-family homes on the coast of Catalonia. The simple shapes and whitewashed walls would reach their ultimate expression in the Ugalde House, near Barcelona, in 1951. This construction of extreme simplicity is one of the most admired works of Spanish architecture from the past fifty years. For Manuel Valls Vergés, luxury came through the quality of the construction