My point of view:
on Architecture and Travel

Interview Date: 28-04-2011

I live in Colombia and that’s far away and in a sense we are far from the other culture, we have a lot of culture in South America but we are far from the other culture. To travel has to be part of the life of everyone, not only architects, not only students of architecture. Everybody has to use it as a way to grow up in culture and to grow up in knowledge for the world. Because it is very important to know where you live and by enjoying travelling and enjoying it is a very good way to understand better the world but also to enjoy and to learn about the world.

What do you think is the added value that architecture creates within a city?

Architecture could become destination. If you have seen some architecture had made possible to locate cities that nobody knew before. But to me the most important value than architecture especially thinking on the fact that most people in different cities is that architecture has the potential to democratize society. So, when you use the public space and when a building is a good building for the city and creates public space in a sense the building creates pleasure but also creates a quality. That’s the only way in how I see cities should behave in the future: giving pleasure to people but also provide space for people equally.

There are two things: one is that we are Latin. I always say that we are born in the best atmosphere of the earth and that’s the Latin atmosphere because for us to enjoy is our priority and then we do other things you know. So these events should be a celebration time. We work hard, we work all the time and it is very difficult to do proper architecture, sometimes things go well, sometimes it doesn’t. So, these events are very nice places to celebrate, very nice places where you can meet people. I find these events very educating. For me, I work as an architect, but for me it’s important to come to these events, to get more knowledge, to get to know the people, to get to know the thinking.

These things are very good for educating people. I mean, first for enjoying, second for educating people and of course the venue of these events are important for cities, because that brings tourism, that brings income to the economy and here everybody knows Barcelona as a city that people would desire to go. But it would be more interesting if you tried to choose cities that people wouldn’t go as a destination because here in Barcelona you would come, once you are alive you would come to Barcelona anyway, not for this reason only. It would be very nice if these events happened also in places that nobody normally would go and you would get to know other places.

There is a lot of worry right now about what is local and what is global. Of course, the tendency is that everything is becoming global. Also there is a lot of worry about how creative architects are or not and in this sense there are two difficulties in thinking on this. One is that it is very difficult to put on the table new ideas and it is very difficult, because even if you believe there is a new idea, you will find that somebody else did it before. So many millions of people thinking and that’s one thing that is very interesting.

The other thing is that if architecture is local or if architecture is global. I am the first generation of architects in Colombia who grew up outside the country apart of the life and we studied abroad also, because it was not possible before. And of course in this sense my culture is a kind of global-influenced culture. I live in Colombia and I work in Colombia. So I have very much concern if I can build a local culture or architecture. I think it is a question. I believe and I am more concerned in two facts. One, is making architecture that is for all and that’s very important, in a country like Colombia where one every two person is a poor person, I mean 50% of the population are poor. So it is very important to do much with one building.

I don’t care about the styles, I don’t care about aesthetics in this sense because the main contribution that a building can do is to create culture and to create social life and to provide extra public space and to create these - what I call - democratic space for everyone. And I’m concerned about that. I’m not that concerned on the side of the profession, thinking pure, if a building belongs to a place or not. The buildings always belong to the place even so they could take this idea of being part of the world, the worldwide context or atmosphere.

How would you characterize the modern Colombian architecture?

There was an influence for many years in Colombia, about 40 years. A lot of work on architecture that has been called ‘The Architecture of the place’ is a lot related with Greek. Greek has developed a lot in Colombia so we have like a prototype, we see like 90% of the cities a kind of range color because of Greek. That becomes very ‘us’ even so the value that became from abroad, right now is very Colombian in this sense.  Right now, what happens is that a group of generation like mine tries to look and face all the paths.

We respect that architecture but we are also thinking of ‘what else can we do as architects’ and we are trying to look all the materials, we are trying to look at all the views. What is very important is that there is a coincidence between politicians and the architects and planners, working, thinking on the city. I still thinking as I said before that is more important city than architecture always. It is more important to create spaces for people than to create private spaces for people. It is the way the cities should go and that could be natural in some places perhaps in Europe, but that is becoming very important in Colombia in the sense that it will provide us a better platform for people to develop themselves.

In recent years attention turns to green urban regeneration. Do you think that it is imperative for the city or it’s just a new fashion with economic outcomes and covertly interests?

There is a fashion on green issues. What is amazing always when I think about these green issues is that Colombia is located on the equator line, we don’t have seasons and weather is always stable so we have been very green in Colombia. Because we love to watch our side, we love life within the spaces; we simply don’t care about money very much so we make windows that open. What is so funny to me right now about green issues is that we always have been green. We haven’t had very much respect to the environment; we haven’t been green because of the poverty, poor architecture is very sensible to the environment.

About green issues in the cities is far more complex because of course there are areas of the city that need to be remade, because there have been gone down areas and so on. These processes will take time, they are complexes, and you need to develop something that looks through the time. This is very difficult because at the same time there is this idea of cities belonging to politicians, to political movements, so ideas change and so on.

What is difficult is to actually build in a strategy that will remain on time which is at the end what worries me. There are issues that are far more important than this kind of fashion in green issues because we are already green in this sense.

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