73 Una casa es un templo

Music.

Welcome to Reset, to those who have already listened to us or to those who listen to us for the first time, my name is Igor Nieto Yoli and today we are accompanied by my former professor of the university, who I still call a teacher, Martín. Please introduce yourself, teacher. Well, my name is Martín Ernesto García Muñoz, that is my full name, you can call me whatever you want, Martín or Ernesto, the two ways are like normally.

Prof, I already installed myself in the prof, since many years ago, well, I met Prof. Martín when I was studying architecture at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, here we are very adequately, in fact, I must say, in the Jardín de Tequis, which is one of the most emblematic places in the city, right?

Yes, in fact, it is a very emblematic place because it is part of the seven neighborhoods, as they call them, which in reality were seven villages, seven towns that were founded around the city that intended to be the city of Indians at first with the Franciscans. Pero después el hallazgo de las minas de oro y plata les dio otro sentido y los convirtió en la ciudad para españoles.

Y entonces eso... Pasa un niño en un carro eléctrico. Me permito aprovechar esa interrupción para hacer una acotación. Una de las... No me acuerdo ni cómo se llamaba la clase que nos daba, profe. Me acuerdo de varias, pero no me acuerdo de los nombres de tal cual. Pero lo que era interesante era que analizábamos la ciudad en parte. And there was also a semiotic one and other more abstract things, but what is interesting when you study architecture in a city is that you study

the city in which you are. That's right. Right? So we analyzed in class a lot the history of the city and the nature of the city and the psyche of the city. And the culture. And the culture, right? That's right. Yes, yes, indeed. So I told you, well, this is a place, yes, effectively very emblematic of the city. And for me it is much more emblematic because I was born here. In Texas. In text, here to a square of the church, behind the church.

Practically, I was born there. So, this is my birthplace, and I've had a lot of things in my life here, right? You don't live here anymore? I live here, in part, and in part not, because I have a house here nearby, and I come and go, and I'm in both, in the one in Villa Magna and the one here. Yeah. So, I'm still here. Wow. I'm still here in the neighborhood. Wow, that's great. It was unintentionally, a little. Uh-huh. Bueno, yo quería entrevistarlo, profe.

Quizá podemos ir por ahí un poquito más. Hace mucho que quería platicar con usted porque sé que tenemos, desde que estudiamos en la escuela, yo decía, nah, pues va a haber conversación, va a estar sabroso para presentar San Luis. Sobre todo, a mí me gusta hablar de San Luis. Es una ciudad muy críptica y muy desconocida, incluso dentro de México. Es una ciudad discreta que no le gusta mucho que hablen de ella. Tengo esa impresión. Sí. Pero es interesante.

Por supuesto que es interesante. Yo creo que como cualquier lugar del mundo, yo creo que cualquier lugar del mundo vale la pena conocerlo y saber de él. O sea, el mundo está lleno de riquezas culturales y San Luis es una de ellas, ¿no? Porque tiene sus peculiaridades. Suele ser una ciudad con un valor cultural muy arraigado, muy profundo, que viene de cosas muy lejanas, ¿no? Some would say that it comes from their foundation, but I would say that much further.

From those hunter-gatherers who lived here in this valley and from other groups, not hunter-gatherers, but also sedentary, who lived in the inmediations of this region. Here in Villa de Reyes, there is a very interesting archaeological site recently explored by the INA in El Cóporo, in Guanajuato, which is very close here, in Ocampo, Guanajuato. And so, it is very possible that in Peñasco there were small settlements of those sedentaries.

So, the tradition that could be talked about is much more ancient than only 450 years or 500 years ago, but much further, because there is a very deep root, however, it is a city that has diluted all its cultural factions, they are diluted in their various veins of culture. So, all that diversity that apparently loses its identity, like the Guachichile.

I was struck the other day that some people on YouTube came out who called themselves the authentic Guachichiles, who were called the heirs of the Guachichiles. They were extinct culturally.

And then they lived in the United States, and they were people who were in search of identities. It's a little strange, isn't it? But nevertheless, I think that... The Huachichiles were a pre-Hispanic group that existed in the north of what is now Mexico when the Europeans arrived. That's right. When the Spaniards arrived, essentially, it was one of the ethnic groups that belonged to what they called the Great Chichimeca.

So it was one of those Chichimeca nations, the Huachichila nation, that inhabited here, in this region, and it has been a topic that in recent years I have been passionate about exploring it, knowing it, deepening it, and trying to get closer to it. Obviously there is nothing. Yes, we are talking about making history and research based on stories and pieces of anecdotes that are out there in some manuscript.

In manuscripts, perhaps from some historians, but essentially there are many rupestrian vestiges. So that is very unknown and they have been exploring it recently. Because many people who today are worried about that topic, right? Evidentemente es un tema muy importante y significativo.

A mí me gusta agarrar San Luis últimamente desde que está en la uni como se dice creo que sin éxito que no crees la imagen de que tomas un pequeño ejemplo para hablar de un todo ya que esta es una ciudad arraigada tradicional, creo que en esta ciudad es más fácil de repente leer los cambios que afectan al todo al mundo, And it is a city, as he says, that has a lot of arrogance and at the same time great ignorance of itself.

That's right, yes. In fact, if you ask people about the Guachichiles, I can assure you that 80% do not know who they are. And they have no idea where they are from, despite the fact that they lived here 500 years ago.

So that's a very peculiar situation of what you just underlined, which is very true, that is, the local culture is like that, it fumes between itself, it is a culture that is in the entrails, but at the same time it diffuses, it is like a smudge in the cultural process, but then when you start making new strokes, it is delineated and the image begins to appear. What is there begins to appear and that has been there since always, but that emerges.

Where can I find it? In what strokes of society? Well, there are many things. In principle, from the landscape, I sometimes came to walk here, and one of the things that I started to imagine when I was walking in the process of taking turns here in the garden. I imagined what the place was like at the time of its foundation or before its foundation.

So you could imagine in this valley a group of ten, seven people who were part of that Chichila ethnic group, sitting here, as there are people here in the garden, they could have been lying down with a bonfire around it and looking at the landscape at the bottom of the Sierra de San Miguelito, which we cannot see today, except in small hideouts between the streets. When we see the perspective from the calle de Mariano Otero or from other streets, we see those details of the sierra.

Are you from here, from San Luis? Yes, from San Luis. And your family is from here? Also. Well, my sisters, yes, but my parents, no. My parents came from outside. My father was from Matehuala, from here in the north, and my mother was from Los Altos de Jalisco. But they came here. My mother lived here on the street of Terrazas. They arrived there in the 40s and established themselves there.

And my father came here to work and lived in a guesthouse that was there in the corner of the terrace where the Ríos Banda are today. That was a guesthouse, they met there and here they started and here they gave their lives, so that's why.

Y por ejemplo, yo comparando con la familia de mi padre, que también es un caso similar, gente del altiplano con gente de Jalisco, pero no había, aunque crecieron en San Luis, como el núcleo de lo que era San Luis era tan cerrado, quizá no se sintieron tan integrados. En su caso, por ejemplo, se sintió integrado San Luis o una...

No, I have never felt integrated. A lot of people who know me, when they talk to me, on many occasions they ask me if I am from outside the city, if I am from another place. No, I am from here, from all my life, I have never actually left here, and yet people see me as if I were not from here. You grow up here in San Luis, but you grow up in a neighborhood, you move to the aviation industry, at what age?

A los seis años. a well-forgotten area of ​​the city, but I suppose that at the time it was like a kind of lighthouse, of urban growth, of a new model of urban growth. A satellite city. A satellite city, that's the word. Because in the environment where the colony ended, there was a field, then the fractionality ended and it was a rural world in the environment. My childhood I spent it playing in the mills that were close to my house, they were two blocks away, those mills.

People felt that when one lived there they were very far away. That's right, that is, people said, no, well, you already live in another place, in fact I studied in Manuel Ciotón, which is here close to Tequis, and when I took the truck, the one in Muñoz, it was a rural world, I mean, it was a road at that time, the road was practically a road. And I saw a rural landscape, I mean, there were gardens, there were trees, there were crops. And was it already, for example, was it a new way of living?

Yes. What was new about that way of living in that colony at that time? Well, I didn't see it as a child, but now that you ask me, definitely yes, because it was another world. And here in the Tequis neighborhood, in the city, it was a historic area, old, with arraigos, there it was a new city, with new families, everything new.

Ok, we are in the Tequis neighborhood and the Tequis neighborhood, as we said, is one of the old seven original neighborhoods of the city, that we have not contextualized that, the city was founded in 1591, and these seven neighborhoods are founded, which in reality, as I told you, are villages, villages of Indians, right?

In reality they were villages and some were built to try to root the Guachichiles groups who were semi-nomads, local indigenous, they were not used to sedentary life and brought Tlaxcaltecas, that is why one of those seven villages is called Tlaxcala. What is a village exactly? A town, a foundation. When you say village, it is unlike the city, which was a city. Yes, yes, a village in the ancient, in the medieval cultures, a villorrio was a set of houses, a set of, a small settlement.

A burgo? A burgo. Is it the same? Or a villorrio. Yes, the burgo comes more from the French and the villa is more Castilian. So that's it, a villa is a. A small village. Outside of a city. Outside of a city or a more important urban center. And these villas that were founded around the center, which eventually became neighborhoods, and even now we could argue that they are part of the center.

They are part of the center. These villas have a more traditional way of living in the sense that they have a center, a church, a square. What else? A market? Well, yes, they had many things, markets.

They had the religious authority, the civil authority, in some cases, these villas had their own pantheons, in some of them, if not all of them, they had their own pantheons, so it was… And the other thing they had was people who lived here for generations and that was not replicable in this new colony, the aviation industry, but the rest was replicable, right? If there was a church, if there was a center, if that was tried to replicate that, right?

That is replicated, it is not replicated in any modern urban center of the 60s onwards, that is, it was one of the few because not even the one that was built at the park was the Colony El Paseo and El Paseo does not have that same root. Let's say that in that Colony of the Air Force it tried to be modern and at the same time it continued to be influenced influenced by the traditional way of life.

Let's say that modernity has several exceptions, one that is the contemporary, of today, of today, we could say that not so much, but this one from the 20th century, but there is a modernity that comes from the Renaissance in some way and when cities in America are founded. Mainly in Mexico, are derived from an endowment plot. What is that? A plot of the city, a reticle, to make streets, a network of squares or rectangles, and that's how it's known, as an endowment structure, as a chessboard.

And that was modern in its time? At the time, it was a very exceptional case, because, in the end, that is typical of America, but Latin America. O sea, si uno cruza el río Bravo no encuentras el centro. No hay porque los anglosajones tienen calles principales, no centro. Y tienen su downtown, que es otra cosa. Y en Europa tampoco hay eso. And in Europe they weren't medieval cities, and then they were creating neighborhoods or other areas of growth, but not with that concept.

Here Mexico is born, as a result of Mexico's cities, as a result of the other cities that are being built, and that later is resumed with the orders of Felipe II. In all of Latin America. In all of Latin America. So it was born in Mexico, and that's why in Mexico we have a lot of this idea of the center. So we travel to any part of the Mexican Republic and we ask anyone in that community where the center is and they tell us, here in front of some squares is the plaza.

And everyone doesn't understand what we're talking about. Everyone doesn't understand what we're talking about. If we cross the Rio Bravo and we say where the center is, nobody knows what we're talking about. Maybe they say, oh, the mall. No, no, no, the mall, no. I mean, the center, the square, the power, the church. No, because that doesn't exist. It doesn't exist there. It's a Latin American phenomenon and mainly Mexican.

And we go back to that. It's an exception of modernity that is still very influenced by the medieval past. That religious power in the center has been diluting more and more. I mean, there are no more these figures of authority as I knew them. And the case of the aviation industry was a way of making, of joining those two modernities. The modernity of the 16th century, which comes in the 16th century, and the modernity of the 20th century.

And it is combined and makes a community, a very peculiar location, very peculiar to the city. And until what age did you live there? Well, almost all my life of puberty, until I was 30 years old, 20 years old, 25 years old. So you were an architect, you studied architecture here in San Luis. Here in San Luis. Did the Faculty of Architecture already exist or was it still engineering or how was it? When I entered, I entered in the 80s and the School of Architecture already existed.

It had already been transformed from the School of Architecture to Unidad del Hábitat. had left the scheme of the architecture career that was born in 72, in 72 a, appendix architecture career of the engineering school arises and from there the.

Architecture career is created as a school that is going to be when it is transferred to the university area, it It comes out of the center, to a new university area. It was in 1976. That's where I studied. Yes, that's right. That's where the first building is built, the one we called the UND building. And that one becomes the emblematic building of the faculty. Totally modern cut, in modern architecture. Yes, CAPS schools.

How different is it to have studied architecture in a building from the 17th century to a building from the 20th century? Yes, of course. It is very different and radically a new concept. Why? Because in Mexico, in San Luis Potosí, until the end of the 19th century, the houses had a central patio or a lateral patio and any old building has a central patio. And in modern buildings, or in new buildings, they lack that space outside.

So, one of the things that had been generated, because the climate here is very benign to live in the outside and the inside, because it is provided, due to the climatic conditions, to be interacting with the outside in architectural forms. Of the modernity that we import, so to speak, from the Bauhaus, from Germany, from France. Everything has to be closed, under one roof and all the activities are carried out inside.

So that changes radically, that is, the building was a closed building with a single corridor, but the life of the living rooms was all about running to the square outside. So life was not inside the building, but the classes, the activities, running through the hallways, but in essence life is outside, because the climate is like that. Why did you study architecture, Professor? Well, I had an interest in studying architecture since I was very young.

I liked to build in my children's games between Indians and cowboys, fighting each other there and making the house for the Indian or the house of the farm of the cowboy, and then later thinking about something bigger. My father had a land in a colony called La Satélite, and he was there building gradually, as well as a field place, so to speak, which at that time, in the 60s, was practically the field. And he began to build with adobe, so he had people who helped him.

And seeing the land, seeing how they did it, seeing how they worked, he began to worry about building. And to make the architectural phenomenon, then some families became to this discipline before I did, they started to study architecture and well, it caught my attention more until finally I decided. So it was encouraged or celebrated? No one told me, no one told me to study it. But there was no resistance in any case? No one, no one told me to study this, from the beginning I said.

I mean, I had my difficulties, like all teenagers, of the concerns that if you study one thing, you study another. Between what other thing was there? Between archaeology, which is still a passion for me, archaeology and the issues of pre-Hispanic history, and on the other hand, the construction of boats in this desert.

Here in the middle of the continent? Yes, yes, yes. I mean, because essentially, well, I started traveling from my child to Tampico, I went to Tampico and then I stopped going because my father was going to work there and he was returning it. And then later one of my sisters got married, a cousin and a sister got married to people from Tampico and then I was going there. So, going and seeing the boats, facing the sea, someone who is from this desert, it was very attractive to me.

For a young teenager, the sea and the boats play a very symbolic role. And then, when I started studying architecture, it turns out that I started. Reading Alec Corbusier and he says that you have to learn from the boats to do architecture. And that, well, it impacted me a lot. What did you say you have to learn from the Corbusier ships? There is a book called Version architecture, towards an architecture that was written in 1927-23 and it said that they were those new machines.

Machines that did not have anything left over, that were made to work very well and that we had to learn from the architects who came from the 19th century to do things with many decorative elements, things like that, to learn from that rationality. To cure. To cure. It must be said that in the 20s it was the time of the great transatlantic also. Titanic for example. Normandy and all that. Elizabeth and well, Well, a lot of big boats that were floating cities.

So learning from the boats, from their materials, the steel mainly, was a very interesting factor for him. The planes, the automobiles. He talked about those machines. He had to learn from the machines. That's why he once said that the house should be like a machine. A living machine. Y eso pues a mí, en mis primeros días de estudiante, tener en mis manos a Le Corbusier, pues me impactó mucho.

Supongo, no supongo, sé, porque me tocó vivir un poco de esa época, que antes de estas épocas digitales, en las que puede uno difundir la información tan fácil como este podcast, que quién sabe dónde nos estén escuchando y quién nos esté escuchando, pero el acceso a la información era una cosa más difícil. Y entonces acceder a esos libros, esos textos, se sentía como algo muy especial, ¿no? Ah, sí, claro. O sea, yo creo que de mi generación yo era el único que lo tenía.

Porque aparte, pues siempre he tenido un gusto por la lectura. Y creo que, pues por desgracia, todavía en México no se ha adquirido tanto ese gusto por la lectura. In society in general, and it is sad to say it, but not in university students, they are given a lot of interest in reading, and I have always been an avid reader since I was a child, so, Books had an impact on me. And how did you get them?

I bought them. There was a man who came to the faculty, he put his template of books, which were very expensive. Then some came, they saw them, they looked at them and left them, because they were very expensive. And instead of spending my money on the trucks to go back home, I ran back, I saved that money and bought it. So it was a student effort to make me many books and books and then read and read.

The book for me is still a very peculiar object, a very interesting object because it can accompany you wherever it is. It has an aroma and some very peculiar characteristics. It doesn't need batteries. It doesn't need batteries, it doesn't download.

You open it on the page you want, you find yourself in the text and it becomes something extraordinary in a great teacher, in a teacher who gives you the same class again, finally, because it may not give you the same class, But that master, who is also a scholar, because he gives it to you with a recognized wisdom, it becomes something extraordinary. I love that they lend me a book already underlined, or buy a book underlined, for example.

Yes, it is an interesting book, because you discover the things that others discovered. And you start to realize that those things can have qualities and something that you don't see. It's like when you watch a movie again. There are many of us who watch a movie and then we see it and it's over, but there are those of us who also see it with other eyes and we start to observe how well the characters acted, how well the director worked, how he organized his work, the locations,

how faithful they are. Yes, the edition, how well it is made. The photography, what qualities it has. Well, let's go back to the same thing. I mean, I think as a child I used to watch the same movies over and over and over again because there was one or two. And now with the internet, the children see one and the next one and the next one and the next one. And some repeat, but it's easier to skip the next one. Yes, yes, yes, because there is more diversity.

And also they can choose things that we couldn't. In television, you just had to see what was there.

Y eso nos lleva a un tema que platicábamos hace rato, antes de empezar a grabar, de cómo esta es una época de atomización de muchas cosas, cómo el mundo está en un reinicio de muchas cosas. Hay un continuo histórico, pero al mismo tiempo se siente el cambio, se siente el cambio. Y yo creo que en parte tiene que ver con eso, con la saturación de información.

Yes, all of that has to do with technology and what has changed, but I think there is a fact that has marked the world, and that this phenomenon is not from this place or from another, it is worldwide, it is a worldwide circumstance, because the fact that marked the great change was the pandemic.

So the pandemic is resetting everything and it has put us on a new conception. Apparently, leaving the mouthpiece was to return to the same thing as before, but no, nothing is the same. Things are not the same. In fact, one can realize that there are many different things, that the world in its entirety is changing in a dizzying way, very quickly.

And that, for example, to give you a very precise example, I grew up with books of art history, Spanish, of salvation. And today art no longer has the same meaning that it had before, that is, art has become something that no longer has that innovation. The whole history of Western European art, which was subdued like this, was proposed as something that had to be innovative, mainly from the Renaissance to here. Yes, of modernity, of which I spoke a while ago.

That it had to be innovative, but today, what is being innovated in terms of art? Nothing. Or how would you innovate? That's the other one, it's no longer so clear what it is to innovate, there is already so much saturation. You're not going to innovate anything anymore, I mean, I don't know, each stage of the European historical evolution contributed something, but we have already reached the end of the pandemic and today Europe has ceased to be the center of the West.

President, today the world has other conditionals, today we have other epicenters and European art begins to import us a chimney.

In fact, art itself begins to import us a chimney as such, we see it full of superficialities, banalities, economic interests, and all kinds of things. And it turns out that today, people and society as a whole, despite those who emphasize those intellectual parts so that they see it that way, today what really has a strong essence is to make a healthy art. That is, crafts. Back to the hand, to the work of art made by hand. I was telling you that right now, starting the podcast, right?

Here we are in the plaza with the noise of the cars that pass with the reggaeton here next to it, with all that. In an age of saturation where there is so much information possible, the raw, sometimes it can be a value. And there is artificial intelligence that makes you do whatever you want. So, what value does an image have? But when you see the guy who painted it in front of you, it has another value, right? So, that's where the artisanal thing is going, right?

Of the personal invoice. Yes, but art separated itself and separated artisanal, as if it were a lower art, a minor art, a manual. It's not. In reality, artisanalism preserves the pure essence of what art was in other circumstances and it no longer cares about Western art. It may even have its roots deeper in this vision of pre-Hispanic art, for example, which is not the Western vision, which is a different vision. It is the yolot, which is the heart, and the flor, the flower and the song.

These pre-Hispanic concepts, which is the way they assumed the concept of culture, art. It was a single concept. It was a single concept. Like in English, entertainment and art is the same in a certain way. Yes, for them there were four concepts, face and heart, flower and song.

So, that talking about face and heart, as what emerges from the essence of the human being, as the deep spiritual part of the human being, that face and heart, and that flow and song, that is, what produces are flowers, sung, the beauty of nature, where the essence is in nature. In the peoples of Mesoamerica they saw it like this, that is, the beauty and the essence of the aesthetic is in the nature, in the flowers that become songs, the song is a form like a bird trina and it is a song.

So that is a very holistic concept of what we could call a healthy art today. That is, art has stopped being healthy for a long time. Since Marcel Duchamp started talking about making a urinary object, turning it into a… giving it the concept of a work of art because he decided so. And indeed, it has that quality, that apocryphal. But the essence of what it is to produce something for human enjoyment was lost. Yes, the relationship between the value of things and their creation process

was lost. Yes, and its essence of human enjoyment. Because not all of us intellectualize things, but there are many people who see something simple and it seems beautiful to them. And there it was done with rough, rough, not perfect hands, and yet it produced something that I consider to be a work of art, healthy. And so, talking about healthy art is today a new concept that we have to reflect on with great depth on what art would be, for example, because art itself has ceased to be healthy.

Let's see, let's take this to architecture. To begin with, I don't know if I agree with the idea that architecture is an art, but let's start with the fact that yes, maybe it was at one point. I mean, I think that maybe the architecture has been so disconnected from its healthy side, from its human, artisanal side, that now I see it more sometimes as a business or as a science or as something else.

In many times there was always a business or something like that, but in essence, this idea of a craftsman. And that's what I was telling you about the history of art, in general terms. In the field of architecture, a very particular phenomenon occurred.

The star system ended. The star architect. That's right. The star architect. The star architect. It lasted very little. Since the Renaissance. The Renaissance created the artist because it gave the artist a name that he did not have before and created this model that there was to innovate, innovate and create something new that would impact. The Star System, this art system of creating something new, was a very peculiar situation.

Creates this system that the one who is doing something innovative is the maximum. And yet, today you open Pinterest and there is nothing new under the sun, everything is already created. So, what is new that any architect who wants to be part of that staff system can create? Well, nothing. So, that situation is being reset, because although there are still many out there who want to play the Star System, well, there is no one to do much of that.

Until the 90s, until 2000, let's say before the pandemic, there were still those who wanted to create something like that, right? And they saw in their ego an idea of belonging to those luminaries. Today, practically, that is non-existent. I mean, there are still those people of that hierarchy, but they no longer have the impact.

In fact, I would say so, because one walks through the new neighborhoods, I told him that I was going to see the new neighborhoods here in San Luis, and you see so many buildings, all trying to be different, that in the end there are so many trying to do it, that they become one more. That's right, that's right, so there is no longer that contribution and instead the one who did things the same as the other because it was tradition.

It was a healthy way of his own culture, so let's say they are the two extreme poles of the same coin, of the same pendulum, but one One leads us to these things that are done with that coldness, with that loss of identity, with that banality, with that ego, unlike what was done in another time, the house with you that was the same as the other, and so on.

And that is why the contexts of the peoples were very homogeneous, this one, because it generated that continuity, but a continuity of a cultural linearity, that is, people identified themselves, today they identify themselves with these other concepts of vanity. Of superficiality, of things that can be disposable, the world is disposable, that spirituality has been far from that.

On the other hand, in that other, in that ancient, In ancient times, continuity implied humility, simplicity, integration and a concept of spirituality that we shared. The peoples, because they would go out and there would be processions, and this and that would be done in relation to their criteria of spirituality, which today, for today, are no longer given.

So this is, let's say, those two versions of the currency, those two circumstances in which the phenomenon is implicit, but the opposite of the other. So there are many issues there, but the first one I want to touch on is, Maybe then it is possible that, as art at some point was disconnected from the creative process, when the concept took more weight than the artisanal creation process, as we said, will architecture.

As an abstract idea of ​​design, will come back to approach the creation process as it is and perhaps the architect will return to the bathroom again? Well, what you propose is very complex. Almost medieval, right? It seems simple what you say, but it is very complex. I don't think the architect will return to the bathroom or that interest, because it has been educated to command and how humility is not given in strict terms to architects in the vast majority.

There are few who assume it that way. There are, of course, but they are not the majority. I believe that the architecture will be changed by the circumstances.

Why? Because there are two very important phenomena. One, the current technology. To do everything you want to dispose of it and where the architect is unnecessary. That is, you can go to a Home Depot or a Sodimac or any type of store and buy the materials and be able to build a space.

And obviously this circumstance, because I think that the same John Friedman in that very specific book of the 60s, which was called mobile architecture, where he talks about these spectacular cities of a kilometer high, on mega structures, where you are going to go to a store like this and buy your modules, insert them in that mega structure.

Today the steel structures are that, and more and more the space will be more disposable, so the space, in fact, Rem Koolhaas himself talked about the garbage space, these non-spaces, these non-places, in how space begins to become something, disposable, that it is transformed, that it is lost, and somehow technology is taking us to that, but on the other hand, that's why I told you, there are two parts, on the other hand we are faced with the circumstance of a need to meet again with nature,

with the planet that is suffering radically. Droughts, floods, destructions, changes in climate change, which makes this. An imperative that the architect be aware of creating an architecture that is re-enhanced, that it will take a lot of governance again, that it will recover things that are part of a region in a biological way, in a natural way. Today, cities are 100% gray. The city of the future, if we want to have a good city to live in, must be 100% green.

I mean, the skyscrapers have to convert into green skyscrapers, green things, fill with green things, I remember that here there was even a discussion between the specialists, between commas, urbanists who said that San Luis has a high percentage of green areas, this we are talking about the middle of the 20th century, Yes, that the city had a percentage of green areas already exceeded because the city has two Tanga Manga parks and a Morales park where on the surface the

problem of the green areas is already overcome. Or parks like this one in which we are from other previous times that have their garden and that it was considered at some point that that was already enough. That's right, yes, indeed, but in essence it is not, in essence today the city requires to become a green place, I'm talking very ideally that it should be 100% green, but at least 80% green would be very acceptable.

So this takes me to the other point that I wanted to touch on what I said a while ago, I was talking about a spirituality that must be recovered, right?

And I also believe that the architect has a role in the recovery of spirituality because spirituality cannot be recovered from the old one. I mean, it is not possible that an 18-year-old boy right now you tell him to go to the procession of silence just because, right? And that he goes to see the Virgin on his knees.

But that spirituality perhaps has to do with nature. naturalness. Exactly, as the people of South America would say, with the Pachamama, with the Mother Earth, as the people of prehistory saw it, the Mother Earth, the Earth was a mother, and today we have to recapitulate that, I mean. I respect the reactions of everyone, and you can believe in God, whatever you want, because if we talk to a Muslim, he will tell us that, Allah is the good God, but if we talk to an occidental, he will tell us that

he is Jesus Christ. It depends which occidental. Or the science. Or that the father of Jesus Christ is the good God. In short, and if we go to other places, each one will say what they want. But today we live in a moment where we have to reflect on that in depth.

That if those are nothing more than clichés of other times that we have to overcome to understand in the background what is the true spirituality and the true spirituality is not to believe in Jesus Christ, it is not to believe in Allah or in Mahoma or in Buddha or in whoever, the true The true spirituality is in creating a deep sense of connection with our planet and maybe with the way it was created.

And if you want to call all that God or gods or whatever you want, yes, it can be or it can not be. But spirituality is in understanding what really sustains us in this universe.

That requires a more attentive observation, less superficial, less frenetic, less disposable of the world. Of the goods, of the matter, right? Yes, something possible is that if I build in adobe, it will be very expensive. It is easier to do it in hard and in rock. With steel beams, a steel structure. That is faster and it comes out. Yes, effectively, but that is disposable. And the adobe wall, there will be 500 years.

And what some call the energy well, If a building lasts 300 years for 20 generations, then it is very old. On the other hand, if a building lasts 20 years and you have to destroy it because it has gone out of fashion, because it is no longer what we want, and because it is slightly deteriorated, porque pasaron 50 años y es un edificio viejo, entre comillas, que hay que demoler para hacer algo, uno clamante, nuevecito, brillante, que brille como el plástico.

Entonces, pues eso realmente nos deja vacíos. En cambio, un muro de piedra que ha existido por generaciones y que vuelve a reexistir.

The magic of archaeological sites is something extraordinary, I don't know how many people dare to go to an archaeological site, but I am a fan of archaeological sites, because there you find a very profound spirituality that lasted architecturally, that lasted for centuries, for generations, and that was something very important, because it is not registro de un edificio, sino de vivencias. En los edificios se vive, y es lo más interesante.

Que es lo mismo, yo diría, con el planeta, ¿no? O sea, el planeta existe y tiene su naturaleza, pero se vive el planeta, y nuestro rol como especie creadora es vivirlo y darle conciencia y conectar con él, ¿no? Así es, de hecho, la primera arquitectura es el paisaje. O sea, la primera The first architecture is not four walls and a roof. The first architecture is the landscape, the environment, the place.

And if you don't understand the place, I don't know if it was your turn at some point, I gave you a theory of the spaces. And there I explained to them that the place was first, before finding something else, the place was first. So one had to recognize the place. That nobody ever understood me. It seemed like I was talking in the desert, because nobody understood me when I told them that before thinking about doing, you have to see what there is and recognize the place.

That place already has things. That place already has elements. That place already has qualities, it already has a landscape environment, it already has a mountain, it already has a sea, it already has a lagoon, it already has some trees, it already has a climate, it already has an orientation. It is noticeable now, in the present day, these new infinite colonies of the peripheries, you can see that they were designed in a computer,

in an office, not in space. someone designed it in another place without ever going to stop there.

Because they were created with the idea of ​​business, not with the idea of ​​living. That is, it is to sell an object so that people get involved. So that lacks all human essence. Because finally people will adapt. That is, you get into a car and adapt.

You get into a boat and adapt. adapta, tú te metes a un metro y te adaptas, o sea, pero igual te metes a una casa de interés social y te, Unfortunately, that is the circumstance, that is, the human being has an enormous capacity for adaptability. As an prehistoric man adapted to get into a refuge of nature and made it his home. He made it a place, but not only did he make it a place to live, but he also made it his sacred place.

Because the house, and speaking of Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier said that the house should be like a machine to inhabit. I today believe that the house should be like a temple to inhabit, because the house is a temple and the temple was a house. In other words, the house was born from the temple and the temple was born from the house. So it is a very deep binomial that very little is understood, that is where the essence of building comes from.

And if one does not build with passion, if one does not build with that spirituality, well, it's fine. You can dedicate yourself to building as a business to live, because you also have to live from something, right? But you are not really making a place to live, nor a place with its spiritual essence. You are not making a place to discard. And so, today we have many disposable spaces, and the problem is that this is reflected.

Also in that we sometimes assume ourselves as disposable human beings. So we have to recapitulate who we are, how we are, and where we are going. Because this voracity of growth, without a break, without thinking that instead of using a steel beam, I better use the fist of earth to lift a wall like I did before. And if I have stones, I use stones. and if I have exuberant vegetation, then I use that exuberant vegetation. If I have to renew it, I renew it.

A quality that the Japanese have is that their old palaces have nothing old. They redo them. They redo them year after year, year after year. So they have that quality of removing the palm roof from that old palace and putting it back. to put. You arrive and see it new, but it is that they have been renewed every year. Yes, I did a program in Japan a couple of months ago, precisely, and in addition the offices are preserved, right? There is that wave. And do you still build, teacher?

I have moved away from construction. You know very well that I have a house there that I still don't finish, that goes there, some things are missing and that I have space to do a little more.

I have built that house with that sense of spirituality, it is a house temple. But it is a hybrid that the child uses to pass in his electric car, calm, very slowly. No, but it is a building that mixes tradition and modern materials, also very industrialized. Yes, it is. Pero que no sea desechable. O sea, es un edificio que puede durar ahí fácil 300 años o más. Esa es la característica. El edificio ese que construí fue combinando la esencia de lo nuevo y la esencia del pasado.

No repitiendo lo nuevo, no repitiendo el pasado. O sea, buscando las esencias, buscando como un alquimista, I'm there mixing with Gotero, taking care of every detail, every thing, to finally live there. And by living there, it's me, and it's my essence. And I rewound myself in the detail I see, and I nourish myself, and I maintain my sense of spirituality, even though I'm atheist.

Well, everything you tell us doesn't sound very atheist. One last question, the house of an architect or the house of one, if it is a temple, can it be 100% finished? No, I think that architects are always thinking about doing something new, doing something more, adjusting things, that everything gets better. Yes, because the house of one, one is not complete. Yes. His space, his temple cannot be complete, right? One is built day by day. So, no space is finished. No city is finished.

Never, nothing is finished until there is a human being. And that is part of the problem of the disposable architecture, that you have to sell as a finished product to know how much it will cost. That's right. with precise tastes, and that's why I have moved away from architecture. Today I prefer to make my sculptures, work on drawings, return to that artisan. As I am already retired, I dedicate myself to that, more calmly. I am trying to create a garden in the house.

Of course, due to age and health issues, it's not the same anymore. When I retired, I still had the conditions to do it, but suddenly, when you are there digging, you realize that. Well, many things bother you in your body, you go to the doctor and he tells you that you have three damaged vertebrae, that you have arthrosis and sclerosis, so you have to go more slowly. Yes, and you can't restore yourself like a house of adobe, right?

Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no. I think that one can, on occasion, taking care of one's health, because one knows why one's health deteriorates. One knows where it is going to go. That's right, one really does know why it is deteriorating, what things are you doing wrong, and that Coca-Cola that you take is hurting you, and that if you take this or that, you do this, you eat the other, it is hurting you.

So finally one knows what is hurting you, but we live in this world and we cannot either not to fully distance ourselves from it, so we have to coexist between those two things, between the artificial and the essence of ourselves as the natural, so we are always in that dichotomy of being building day by day. And deconstructing, deconstructing, that's right, until finally this is over. Very well, Professor, thank you very much, thank you very much,

it was It would be great to interview him. Let's see if we can do another one. Sure. With less noise here. Yes, I invite you to the Casa de Ligia. Right there in the temple we will do it. Thank you very much for joining us. We hope that the noise of TX has not bothered you much. And wherever you are, well, you already heard. Build your temples. Blessings. Music.