Manuel Gallego (born 1936), a disciple of the most important Spanish architect of the post-war period, Alejandro de la Sota, is perhaps the best exponent of radical architecture in Spain today. He is counted among the leading authorities in the field. Gallego's architecture is sensibly integrated into the urban or rural context, as the case may be. His rational buildings -a series of broken up primary forms grounded in the particulars of the place, where the spaces created open up to the outside and the walls act as the connecting elements between architecture and nature -stand out for their striking sculptural expression. The radical nature of his architecutre is solidly rooted in the vernacular, giving rise to innvoative designs in which the unapologetic use of local materials (stone, wood, glass, metal) and the handling of light create an intimate dialogue between man-made and the surrounding environment.