Learning from Lina
After four years of studying architecture I had the great opportunity to spend a year in Berlin, I had the great opportunity to spend a year in São Paulo in 2018—time that became very intense and had a lasting effect on my attitude towards architecture.
I believe hardly any other city raises as many exciting questions about the relationship between architecture and its context, about the values it should represent, and about the influence of architectural production on the social fabric. Brazilian modernism was a hopeful and dynamic epoch that lived the dream of a better society. Its proponents produced numerous masterpieces that, in the way they encapsulated local culture and social needs, still provide unprecedented inspiration for the problems that confront architecture in the present.
Before I went to Brazil, I started working in one office or another with all motivation and ideologies stemming from university. I got to know the sober reality of our construction practices today, its dependence on market interests, the enormous time and financial pressure, and the resulting designs. The discrepancy between architecture as it is taught at university and the reality of contemporary architectural production can disillusion a young architect on the way from the studio to the office. In any case, I felt disillusioned.