For Eduardo Yázigi, friend and professor, a tribute

Abstract

The second week of February 2019 began sadder, with the passing of our noble friend Eduardo Yázigi (January and February of this year ushered in a period of great sorrow). At the same time, it eases this sharp feeling of the loss of the body, to stop and remember, see, read and recognize that Yázigi is still with us, more present than ever, as he dedicated his life to the thought and, what is fundamental, to the practice of lived, perceived and conceived space, with his always unprecedented, creative, provocative, erudite and sarcastic way. He gave us a review of “Banal Space” (last); he mused about the “World of Sidewalks”; he debated “Tourism as Conditional Hope”; he questioned the “Soul of Place”; analyzed “Urban Civilization” and, what means the most to me, Eduardo’s earthly and lasting spirituality: he materialized his “Longing for the Future”, making a parody and caricature of his own image, in the “ear flaps” of the book, by presenting his child photo, in the first, and his “degenerate” caricature, in the last, creatively and mockingly. These books by our friend the professor are not works that are closed in on themselves and with him, they bring his permanent anguish and cunning, in the face of the public disregard for cities and the territory and, at the same time, they force us to follow the reflection, in a faithful dialogue, because his writing involves and provokes the reader.