La belleza de pensar: Alejandro Aravena completo

Alejandro Aravena was born in Chile. Architect from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile with postgraduate studies in theory and history at the University Institute of Architecture of Venice. He was a visiting professor at Harvard University. His professional work includes the Faculty of Mathematics Las Torres y Mesas and The architecture school of the Catholic University in the United States is responsible for the design of Saward University in Austin, Texas, and a building for art workshops on the Vitra campus. Their work has also focused on the development of interesting housing through elemental an organization that creates solutions to the housing problem in Chile Alejandro Aravena was chosen by the architectural record magazine as one of the 11 best avant-garde architects in the world well welcome Alejandro Aravena thank you I am not a fant architect so it is difficult when it is for example I write and write many things, plays, essays, but every time I say that I am a writer, it makes me wonder.

I don't know how many people can really call themselves a writer. No, I am convinced that for now I am someone who writes. That would be a first question. Is it an architect? It's simply By having the title or architect is someone who deserves that qualification for his talent, his work well, for now the title is not a minor thing one is legally responsible for what he builds eh And maybe that is the only difference from simply building as It has always been Never, you never had to be an architect to build eh now the important thing is certainly the works Eh the title of this program of the beauty of thinking makes me a little uncomfortable eh I dedicate myself more to doing eh it is and that eventually it is not an easy title eh No I always found it difficult Yes then architect is defined by the constructions by the works by what one does eh That seems relevant to me I think there is a constant of yours from what I have been able to see that also that dichotomy between the beautiful and the useful No, that is surely one of the great dilemmas of architecture as I do not think about it much eh We do not set out to make beautiful things we have problems to solve and I speak in plural eh my practice is a collective practice for definition architecture is collective one does not execute with one's own hands the things one designs eh But also the way in which projects are born in our case is by thinking out loud eh They are groups of people that have to interact one never also creates or doing something because one had some creative impulse but someone has a problem to solve and calls you to make a construction that solves the problem eh And what interests us is to solve it in the most precise way possible eh irreducible possible eh irrelevant Possible is that question that someone has.

If that later turns out to be beautiful or not beautiful, it is not to say that one does not touch it when one projects, clearly, that one makes choices, but but they are part, I think, of the ineffable, but not, of which it is better not to speak a an architect realizes when he has done an important work, I say like a writer, a writer realizes when he has really written something that is worthwhile, eh, I think so, yes, which does not mean that it is a great work but rather a work and above all that satisfies him and he thinks that it is important for others and above all because it has to be thought about in relation to the problem and the restrictions with which he had to work.

A work has no sense of being judged or even experienced outside the framework that it is given. allowed us to become eh And for that set of problems that in general is the one that one deals with for long periods of time, a project never takes a short time eh it is very difficult that that then in an instantaneous glance that is how one then lives Things in the city are not things that do not have an explanation behind them of the entire process that led to them being made. What one does recognize is that for that set of circumstances one clearly took a turn of the screw.

And perhaps it produced something that the mere question did not contain it is say something Maybe it has to do with what you are saying alej architecture is the will of the time translated space there is something there is something that has to do with there there is one I know this phrase of mine it seems incomplete to me A lesson that I learned from one of my professors, Fernando Pérez, a Chilean architect, suits me much more. He said that every work of architecture is at the same time a mirror and a mirror mantle and a mirror mantle and a mantle that suggestion No suggestive yes mirror and above all it is very guiding for practice more than for thinking let's say or or or digesting a work is how one faces the problem of coming to have a work.

So he said that a work as a mirror is an object like this glass for example to which one pays attention to the one on which one rests one's gaze and eventually it has been well done, it can come to reflect an era, a particular moment in history, a cultural state, a society, an author, and eventually, in that dimension, the most important thing falls, is that one. spirit of the time reflected eh Like a mirror in an object to which one pays attention but at the same time said Fernando Pérez eh an object a work is a mantle to which one does not pay any attention eh when one drinks water if it is well designed in The diameter it has fits the mouth and contains the water well and one would not want to pay any attention to that object and disappear in the corner of the eye.

And from that point of view a work is simultaneously a mirror as if it were a month but a cloak as if it were any laugh. person when he uses architecture And that I think is what one eventually has to be able to achieve and that does not always happen but that eventually one recognizes it going back to the previous question that is taking sides it seems to me in something that has to do with this architecture of impact not a very visible architecture not that attracts attention so to speak I don't have any at this moment the war museum of Bilbao state it has been impossible for me the works that were inside the museum that is, it is the Contrary example to the cup is extraordinarily interesting but the work what interests you there is the architecture the museum cl one could say that he left his condition as Manto pending he left his condition as Manto pending a little if one wanted but eventually part of the problem that one received could be making a mirror.

I don't have an ethical or moral problem with making a work that has an impact. Yes, the nature of the problem required that. Now the problem is that ordinary day-to-day life needs that object to have that ability to stand up. flank and disappear to let one do what one does in peace every day, which is very common. In the case I'm telling you, I've already told you that I'm not an architect, so I'm speaking at the Museum. This guica impressed me a lot. His ability to Mantle would be to disappear and allow one to see the works that are inside, that is impossible for one who is inside and keeps looking.

But well, it is a I was looking at your background and they are really impressive, especially because you are very young. No, what is it? You are more proud of everything you have done academically and as a reward that you have received, each one at the time allowed that one eh in this kind of thinking by approximation eh is verifying to say well maybe that option was not so bad or that one eh he is receiving some external confirmation that that is where the path goes more or less, since like all things, quite modest awards that have happened at the beginning and increasingly they have a very particular moment.

Notice that I had never thought about it like that because also like the resume One thing is not that you look at it too much, the resume is not useful to you when you are faced with the blank paper, what it would be if I looked at it as an external Now I think that it has happened to me a couple of times to receive some recognition or some opportunity, so to speak. so it is eh Beyond a natural development that forces you to take a leap for which one does not know if one is prepared from never having given a conference, for example, never having given a talk, to being invited to take classes at Harvard, no.

There are no intermediate steps that one went through some other University or you go directly to a nucleus eh You have to deserve that you have to put yourself up to par ture let's say what matters most to me maybe that's why it puts a front on you to a problem for which one does not know if one is prepared and one has to answer. Maybe intuitively, if one starts to think about it a lot, one will probably collapse. The point is that if you manage to get over that fence, it is the ground on which you can stand.

It seems to me that then eh it is like a privilege that one cannot waste without Harvard I would not have put together the basic social housing project for example eh And that difficult problems or complex transversal problems eh only one can face them to the extent that they capitalize on opportunities that They give you how to get to Harvard or receive some award abroad, eventually you can use it or misappropriate it. What did Hardware give you? Well, first, the harshest criticism that I have received from someone from my peers in the world. right moment if you are doing social viewing of those questions that make you vote for everything and start again it is not easy to have hard questions in general eh that tempers the projects and particularly a project as difficult as it was to work in social housing in Chile eh And It was very important to make all the mistakes before starting to build Because first it is a complex problem second it is with subsidies from families who receive these subsidies only once in a lifetime cannot experience eh No matter how much Innovation was required in what we wanted There were questions for which the available knowledge was not sufficient and normally innovators are told Look, don't be afraid of making mistakes, yes, innovation is about knowing how to make mistakes in the right way, well, in this case one cannot make mistakes. with a family that will only receive a house once in their life if they had not received an elementary yes from Harvard if they had not probably received those types of brutal questions from peers the mistakes we would have made later with the families that would have been unforgivable but t Why an elementary title is a happy title yes eh m When you do Social Housing it is what you do when you have no other choice because you don't have enough resources an elementary project is something that one would want to be independent that had many resources not elementary is something that goes that responds with what is relevant eh with what is necessary clears up what is not relevant eh And in social housing eh it seemed important to be able to answer a tough question only with what is relevant but you don't do that approach because You had no choice but to answer it that way, regardless of the level of resources you would like to have, and what it does is fundamentally move the axis from a purely ethical or humanitarian or social question to a difficult question, an elementary project in the end.

Basically, it is a very complex question that requires professional quality, engineers, builders, social politicians, better level of architects, designers, of course, and the basics, I think it changes the meaning of the social issue, since I can only do so much as go back to the origins, return wisdom, you know, homes. It was built until now between the project in execution, let's say and the numbers that are seen towards the front, how much is each house worth, 000 with which we have to buy the land, organize and build the house, that in the Chilean case in Mexico that we are also working on. there It's a little less Chile the standard has improved a little the latest housing policy eh It already allows you to face it with 15,000 how we started building This is not a that is not a restriction of the policy the money available in market conditions allowed us to build in the order of 30 square meters today we are at 40 that is still half of a house the case of Chile is half of a house and if you look in the world the funds available to solve the housing problem of the poor allow us to pay the half of a house and when the money is enough for half of a house the relevant question is what half do we make and in the elementary project what we have done is identify that half that a family will never be able to make on their own.

We believe that where one can subsidize better with intellectual capital, so to speak, a tough question and then whether you can build the other half or a quarter more or you can only hear the case of Chilean politics has an issue that I think is quite relevant, there is no mortgage debt, the most families poor It is not that they do not have income, they do not have regular income, therefore it is difficult for them when they sometimes receive aid from the State to pay loans. So this policy tried to focus on those who did not have regular income.

So public funds allow only half of a house to be built. house but by freeing that family from having to pay a debt it is expected that the income they have will allow them to complete the half that cannot be delivered with public funds. And for that there are very specific design conditions and I would say that the only contribution that we have done in elementary is to identify some design variables that allow us to expect that that home to increase in value over time all of us when we buy a house We hope that it increases in value seeing social in a percentage unacceptable high uh that value decreases and housing almost by definition is an item of the national budgets where one could talk about investment more than social spending, that is, a home should be able to increase in value over time and those design conditions are those that we identify and it is a direct transfer of assets to the families that most They need it interesting we start openly I don'tI followed this machete, as we say, obviously you could have headed in the direction you would have wanted in this conversation, but instead of talking to me about your impactful works, so to speak, in some way I have heard you talking with a lot of passion and a lot of pride about this social housing project.

Why is it because they are ongoing problems? I suppose that what takes up most of your time takes away your sleep. They are problems for which you have some knowledge that effectively allows you to feel that you have made a contribution but that does not mean that everything is answered. questions in courses are probably one of the only ones that one can speak and speak because one is trying to clarify oneself. I spoke trying to rest a memory a project and I think that written language for that is better the same way that I projecting in the office for that's why I say it's a collective act it's eh thinking out loud about the projects when one verbalizes things one realizes that said stupidity or that eventually by the other's face one recognizes that maybe he wasn't so stupid.

What one said at this point of the question, what is architecture? I have no idea, nor am I very interested. I do, I make projects that synthesize questions that come broken down as if with many strands, that is, always a question in architecture in the city has many components, many inputs. eventually one needs to understand how many fibers a problem is made of and what the architecture simply does is that eventually being one more than one fiber the project can synthesize. What I do is deal with the questions that must be answered, making the problem more complex. level that is required trying not to leave variables out of the equation that one has to solve And then the project comes and synthesizes a possible answer but that is the architecture Beyond the conditions that meet with you the definitions encapsulate not true the conditions to me they help how to mobilize it do you consider yourself an artist being an architect or is it not a profession it is yes neither no nor does it matter to define that I had a phrase that I liked, Adolf remembered, the ones he said are only art, funerary monuments and commemorative monuments, the rest is not art in terms of what is built into art and I may have a prejudice against it, it sounds too exaggerated to me. the dimension of Mirror that I know it has to be But it has to have this double condition like litmus things depending on the angle at which the View is one or the other, that is, it either disappears in the corner of the eye or you are left answering the questions with quality that you put it as an artistic object, so to speak, it makes art more complicated for me eh Because I think that artists start too much from themselves eh As if there were an inner world so valuable so powerful eh that the world deserves to see it eh And in truth I find that the world that one has inside doesn't matter at all eh.

There are enough problems outside of oneself eh for one to put the tools that one has, the talents that one has or the training that one had at the disposal of being able to solve That problem, starting from outside of oneself, seems to me to be one of the healthiest things one can do, otherwise one talks about things that only interest others, as one that is interesting, eh. And in general, if one starts from oneself, one solves problems. irrelevant eh since we started talking the word problem was used many times as your conception of what you do has essentially to do with the detection and solution of problems from the moment that someone puts a lot of resources to create a building let's put it like this in Gen Although one is not just a building, they are problems that that person has to solve, for which he or she turns to a professional who shapes it and synthesizes that into a project and in general with that with that job, I feel comfortable, I don't see why I want to change it. eh And problem implies solution That is, if one cannot say that after having used resources in what one did one is not better off eh It seems to me that it is also not inefficient simply because one does things differently from others It seems to me that it is not no It is not enough to spend the amount of resources that are generally spent on architecture, it has to be better and if one cannot, there is a problem for which a solution becomes so relative that one made an improvement, eh, that the world of art or the cultural world likes no no no no to judge not to say look this is better than this other and it seems to me that this is where we have to enter the difference between the problem of art would be the fact that the person who wants to make art with architecture more than what you had very correctly good of the idea that one has something wonderful inside that deserves to be shown and admired by others surely avoid and allude to what you call the problem surely of the real that is to say you have to solve problems and by superimposing on that one a project of his own It is not true of the architect that that is what he supposes to be art It is not true that it is the good Yes because perhaps you also disguise with words or with more complicated terms than what in In reality, they are very specific questions, no.

I mean, it is a characteristic of pseudoscience not to put words to assert itself as a science by creating languages, let's say or almost like passwords, no. I mean, that happens in many Yes, I think that many, especially in architecture, too. Sometimes I read it as a non-architect. I read an article on architecture and it's not easy to understand it. Yes, well, for me, I don't think you've ever bought architecture books, that is, they don't interest me either. in white it's not easy eh to do something that improves having done nothing eh And architecture books don't help you with that leap eh but getting back to the topic of everything yes eh but I think that the titles speak of what behind that of trying to make the operation easier, the facts of architecture, which is probably a book that we also wrote with Fernando Pérez and José Quintanilla, the facts are things that we can all understand.

In other words, there is no need to put a word on it. strange word to issues that in general are quite simple now that things are simple does not mean that they are easy eh it is probably their highest level of difficulty is that they are simple eh one of the people who lately the lineage of your book is Lan architectural materials materials or the place Yes, of course things are very good But also those are old books so to speak eh I don't think today that writing eh No no I think that one is The more it gets the more difficult it gets eh what I know it's not coming comes s nothing ahg however I do it eh of course Yes now lately a person who influenced me a lot is my partner in elemental who is an engineer called Andrés Jacobelli and engineers have a world eh It's not simpler it's not easier eh but it's clear eh And I know and the things that are better than others can be talked about without shame eh And that thing seems healthy to me eh Look this project is better than this other eh let's vote for this one let's continue on this side that in general in the world of art is very difficult to do and everyone hides behind the fact that they are relative, all of that is relativism, not the idea that everything can be the same or not different, thinking of a tie, not that I am saying no, things can be green but also They could be Blue and in the end you don't know what's better, what's worse than what's up, what's down.

The first workshop I did in the United States in Harvard is called other wiseness otherwise things could always be like this or that eh And in truth, this makes me a little sick, eh. And there are certain areas where you have to be able to say, eh, Look, this is better than this other, or until when, with this thing that everything could be done differently, eh. That was a housing workshop. emergency there is no time and there are no resources to respond in the wrong way to social housing there is one step and this partner and friend of mine Andrés Jacobelli from elementary who is an engineer engineers have two fantastic things eh When we started from the environmental project I saw the difference but Immediately the first thing is that they do not start asking themselves like the architects, almost with a gesture of putting their hand on their face, thus coming inwardly, what a good social housing would be like or what a good thing would be like if it were not a museum school.

When they go outside, they identify who has done it well, that is, they start from outside themselves and if they don't know something, instead of becoming experts in what they don't know, they hire the guy who knows how to eventually ask them the necessary questions. And that requires criteria to discriminate what the different people are telling you who know it works or doesn't work, but they start from the outside and the second thing that engineers have is fantastic is that they think with restrictions instead of being the absence of Limit the absence of eh of external factors one way to describe creative freedom in reverse is because there are restrictions because there are terms of reference for thinking there are terms of an equation is that one can eventually realize What were the degrees of freedom that engineers may have they are not supposed to be artists as they are engineers And again there are problems to solve of course there are problems to solve now the are determined to combat not the problems and the point perhaps could be that one no the problems do not have an a priori answer because that really would be It would be a matter of time but rather at that moment and above all I would say that the field of architecture if something contributes something is that one responds with a possibility of being of something a potential of things not something did not have to do this but that this could have been and that could have probably been where the artistic dimension of architecture sneaks in eh And that up to that area As long as it is limited to this a possibility to a potential of something it seems good to me the word came up when I heard you say word combat, that's why it's like a perspective that you transmit to me is the fight against problems, possibly philosophy, deep down, life should be about solving the problems that arise, the best way it can be.

And maybe it appears to you that there are an intention not to remove the difficulty of the problem and to the extent that there is difficulty certainly that things are no longer very peaceful but that is what is stimulating No that is the challenge that is what is fascinating no And that is what makes it makes it a potentially relevant issue, the greater the difficulty, the greater the potential for relevance, and in the end, I believe that one chooses to spend one's heartbeat on problems that have been relevant. Alejandro, globalization, no, no, in short, that word that defines so many things but has not produced a fairly uniform architecture in the world.

In other words, there are no buildings that one sees in some places that one sees in other places, other places, of course, as a total generalization, it seems to you that the fact is to see a certain specificity that the original architecture surely had, let's say. not from each place but that is not a problem of globalization, it is a problem of the designer who does not attend to all the conditions of the problem, that is, to the extent that I do not load the equation with all the variables that the answer probably has to have Gen what is supposed to be well done because it was done or if one thing is too much, I transplant one place to another and then I am going to make a fool of myself with this but to the extent that one did not pay attention to all the particularities of the case to some production conditions to a climate to a context to a city to a local sensitivity of course the most likely thing is that the result will have that capacity to go around the world But that is not a problem of globalization that is a problem of the architect, yes, of the group of professionals, it is a city where there is no sun.

Architects, uh, who don't know how to order with what I had the right to do through magazines, it is assumed that there are certain things that are the best. Of course, if I want to be a good architect I must do that Or something similar that take things that because that would consecrate me as one of the I'm at the p we would say no and and in fashion however leaving That's a bit like leaving dead that is, leaving dead there is nothing worse I think also a little ridiculous that in the back of the world one does the same thing they are doing as in the center because the most likely thing is that they did not answer the question correctly, more than anything else it seems that the trip that I want to make is that the trip that I want to make is not added.

In elementary projects, particularly in housing projects, when there are few resources, the answer is reduced to a core so hard that it ends up being quite universal. In other words, it is not so different what a person does to solve their basic housing need of access to opportunities in The city needs to have in Africa, in Asia or in Latin America. In other words, that very compact nucleus of habitability is very global, it is very universal. Of course, but also original in the sense of You don't think that those restrictions, I don't know if that's the word. uate in some way they make that look like the architecture without architects of a long time, that is to say that ultimately the great wisdom we say of popular architecture that warm places made high ceilings that in short that they knew how to solve for a question of of the deep knowledge of what the circumstances of each place were, although you do not believe that there is an approach to that to a certain extent, it does share in the DNA, so to speak, but I am not nostalgic for any past time or optimistic about any future time either.

I mean, I think that here now we have specific questions to answer and resolve, and those questions, uh, or that ofArchitecture without an architect was in an urban fabric, so to speak, mononuclear, that is, they did not have a digestive system and also a nervous system. In other words, the city today is a much more complex organism that a while ago, individual operations did not guarantee the collective success of the operation. then eventually the genetic information of the housing unit the house the roof the walls has habitability conditions close to architecture without an architect but without the contemporary professional contribution that understands that these homes are not in the middle of nature but are in a context dense urban with problems of marginality with problems of underdevelopment with problems of transportation that requires very specific professional contributions eh of course eh and in that sense clearly especially if architecture if an architect has accumulated layers of knowledge that have already made all the mistakes that I had to commit.

It seems very efficient to incorporate it, but clearly, the nature of the questions we answer today are different from those of a previous bucolic era than to ask, What are the works that you value the most and which are the architects that you respect the most, I would say as a principle. In general, all those works that make you feel bad because it didn't occur to you. It's good that at the same time they accompany you in the sense that you recognize that the guy had a hard time solving it and he did it well and and eventually one you feel accompanied in that difficulty eh with that lens I would say that starting from Argentina the works of Rafaela Iglesia seem to me to have a condition eh very powerful very synthetic eh an an approach to the response that is fierce and that certainly to me I would like to have been able to ensure that even though the assignments that I work on do not look similar, the response capacity at that level accompanies and understands it and the same thing happens to me with the work of Solano Benites in Paraguay, for example, again, a place from which one would not expect first-class architecture to emerge from a place full of lack and yet the ability to propose in a scarcity and that at the same time gives you the potential to do relevant things in a world that generally has to know how to cope. with the scarcity eh They are the type of work that accompanies me eh the things that Angelo Buci does in Brazil eh that they have That very balanced Manto mirror condition eh they are elegant projects very natural projects eh Look at Rafael Iglesia's thing I wrote to me today in the morning.

I had to send a text to explain the Vitra project that I am doing in Germany because it is being presented at the Venice airport. Vitra is going to launch its latest projects. Japanese Hey, you're not an architect, but you're probably familiar with the architect who built the Olympic stadium in Beijing now, this is mine, huh. There are three new projects in Vitra, huh, and I'm doing one of those projects. Uh, so they asked me to write the report on the project. project and I started saying that I couldn't get out of my head an explanation that Rafael Iglesia once made of the distinction between things and objects, that is, he is looking to project things or at least that's how I translated it, that's how I understood it.

Things, unlike objects, do not have a project, that is, if one takes the case of a chair, the difference between a chair and a stone, a chair was designed to be able to sit on it, a stone, on the other hand, will eventually have the necessary size and dimension and the necessary form allows you to sit on it But the stone has no project and this idea of ​​being able to make Although it seems a paradox of being able to make a project as if it had not been projected as archaic issues There are certain ancient shoes certain ancient ceramics certain primitive tools eh that have a number of layers that have been deposited layers of knowledge that have been deposited to answer a question and this how to lurk a a a matter between proof and how to harass and besiege what they have produced are objects that are closer to nature than to the artifice eh And what they have is that they naturally engage with life, that is, they are things that fit into life eh And for me, these types of questions, this approach that I heard from Rafael once, you have achieved it, I don't know eventually I think that in some projects it is elementary Yes to the point that people take them and transform them eh the vitra project I hope that it has that capacity for synthesis to do it eh What are you going to do is what What program is it are some workshops of children really in vitra eh it is good to explain it for an architect vitra is a furniture factory eh where are its headquarters in Germany it is a Swiss firm but in Germany are its industrial facilities it has built buildings from the 80s onwards eh it has about nine buildings built, the first one was done by Frank Gery eh then there were eh or Álvaro sisa or saaja jadid all people who today are the Pritzker Prize winners which is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in architecture that is vitra in the background on this campus eh what has been building are a kind of declarations of principle of what architecture could be eh It is not a coincidence the names that are working there then Beyond the program that it is a children's workshop what is being asked is to see what the architecture, that's how I read it, it's like a pavilion, eh, but just respond with a thing and not with an object, which is as if I had to say it in English because I can't find a translation in Spanish. statement free is something that does not have a declaration of a At the beginning when it is what they are asking you so that if it is something that naturally fits with the lives of some children who are going to go, they are going to go there and they are not going to pay the slightest attention to the building that they are going to have around them, however.

It's going to have to work very well for them to do their craft workshops and at the same time it's on a campus that asks you to be an object. I mean, I think that this phenomenon of Manto that you clear and manto eh, yes, synthesizing one would be a thing I believe, one thing is something that is at the same time a mirror and a very interesting mantle. What do you think about the relationship between architecture and the environment? Does it have something to do with this? Let's not say yes, in some way, the most significant part has already been mentioned.

That's why it occurred to me that if you are rigorous with common sense you will solve it. I mean, the whole ecological and environmental thing is really common sense, you have to be rigorous with it but it is a little overrated as what is this called overrated you are a professor As a university student, you have never been to Harvard, you are currently in Chile, yes, from everything you have said so far, it seems that you are not very optimistic about what can be taught, you cannot teach something, it seems to me that you can teach the things that an architect cannot not know. but from there it seems to me that they are a little pessimistic or let's take teaching in its dimension to demonstrate.

I think that hopefully the best thing that one can do is say, look, this is what I was able to do. I think it is very didactic if one can spend a lot. time to reconstruct the restrictions that the conditions of the assignment had How it was infected How many How many versions were there for an answer eh, it's like teaching from your own experience and in the end I think that that old way is clearly inefficient today of saying, look, he who doesn't know about something stand next to someone who does know for a sufficient amount of time and that's eh I think that's what I do myself in the team that I work we do when we see that there is someone who knows a lot about something We try to get close eh hearing how that person smells most of the time but you have to verbalize it.

I think there are some things that you can do but in truth what you learn is to imitate is to imitate imitate of course Yes yes of course eventually as it never comes out Same That after It will be something that one thinks he imitated, it really doesn't look like it, but Yes, in fact, I'm not doing classes today. I have one. I'm a professor at the Copec Elementary Chair. But within this chair, what we do is because we deal with questions that The Catholic University also intervenes, the Catholic University and the Chilean oil company, which is one, the two are the partners of this elementary project, eh.

And what we really have there are questions for which there is not enough knowledge and the cat or the university Eventually, what it allows you to do is spend time finding a way to make up for your own ignorance. Continuing with the line that you have proposed, it is like what you do is show the difficulties and see how they can be resolved. Yes, they can be resolved. This chair, which is where we subsidize ourselves, our ignorance, is also this operational office, this own ignorance, so that it stops being ignorance. You work from ignorance. Ignorance has to face the difficulties.

There is the good combat. I suppose it says combat. Between ignorance and difficulty, some light emerges. Silly questions emerge. Silly questions and stupid questions eventually move the issue towards areas where excess knowledge sometimes paralyzes you. Of course, we are rigorous with our ignorance. In other words, we are not experts in housing, as he says. that an expert is a guy who in a certain field knows how to say everything that should not be done. Ignorance opens up the possibility of ignorance. Eventually, it allows you to jump into the void, so what you have to do is try to ensure that the jump has a level of certainty. high that there are many resources involved and things in general, works of architecture are irreversible, that is, they remain there for a long time, no.

You have to be careful with the Jump that e but eventually that ignorance requires knowledge eh Because they are unprecedented questions and in that area we we move and for that we occupy, so to speak, the apparatus of the university academy but it would make no sense if elementary were not at the same time this office a company that does projects that advises people who have problems eh And that we have named it like a do Tank in Chile I don't know if think tanks are known in Argentina, not study centers eh we see ourselves as a do Tank That is to say for problems of public impact eh And of social relevance well let's do things let's execute projects eh And that It is the other side of the chair, eh, ignorance, operation, ignorance, operation, and so trying to make it a virtuous and not a vicious circle, it's like er is an antidote to infatuation, not that it's even in architects, infatuation is very common, pedantry that doesn't queo It may be possible that knowledge is not true.

It is not true that the person who in some way represents knowledge. Well in that sense I like that of ignorance as a key element of power. We also have a problem with declaring our limitations, I think particularly in projects. of elementary and the fact that the projects are like thought out loud what they transmit is to say look here are the conditions of the problem This is what we come up with it is not infallible Eh but in general it turns out that it gives a satisfactory answer moving away How V the future of architecture In other words, if I couldn't think about what is going to happen to architecture going forward, I think we are in I, I feel a huge adrenaline rush from the moment we have had to live in.

Hey, you know that the year 2007 was the moment in which humanity crossed the threshold of having more people living in cities than in the countryside eh And this threshold is crossed in very specific conditions eh the cities this of having crossed the threshold of people living in the city in principle It is excellent news the city is it is the invention most efficient that man has made to improve people's quality of life Look at any indicator, no matter how intuitive it may seem, from infant mortality to literacy access to work, whatever is better in the city than in the countryside, in fact the development of countries is closely linked to their Urbanization rate.

Therefore, in principle this would be fantastic news, the problem is that if today we have 3,000 million people living in cities, 1,000 million are below the poverty line by 2030 we will have 5,000 million of people living in cities 2 billion below the poverty line if I had to put it into an equation to put it in the terms we have discussed, the world needs to build a city of 1 million inhabitants per week Over the next 20 years with 10,000 per family To respond to this movement of people towards the cities, that means that we are in a profession and it is not the only one, certainly this is an economic problem, it is a social problem, a political problem.

In other words, the magnitude of this Urbanization process has no precedent in history. What it has about man and architecture is a synthetic tool that can be put at the disposal of this question that humanity has before it, so what happens to me is that architecture has a wave ahead, so to speak, of challenge like never before. We had had it like that before, Alejandro said, it has been a pleasure to be, it has been a pleasure to listen to you. Thank you very much for the invitation.