How do you see your performance as dean of the same School? As director and dean of the Architecture School, I intuitively sought to create a stimulating environment through inter- nationalization, inviting foreign professors, with activities and publications. And I think that may have been as or more important than what I taught them. I sought to create a "breeding ground", a climate that would motivate students and professors. And that spirit remains to this day. At the same time, I was fortunate to have such brilliant students, otherwise, I would have failed as a teacher, because my ambition and my drive to propose complex questions would not have succeeded without counterparts who responded to me. It was a privilege to have been able to be at that crossroads, at that moment, to meet those students, and to be able to contribute to creating a climate. What challenges do you see in undergraduate architecture education today? A major issue that has not been properly addressed and is a radical challenge is the multiplication of the number of architects to an impressive degree. This increases the possibility of influence on the one hand, but also the difficulty of getting a job on the other. And the only way to get around this is to understand that architecture is a discipline and that, as such, it is a way of thinking and an intelligence capable of solving problems in a certain way. If an emphasis were placed on that aspect, many architects would have the ability to contribute to a variety of areas and not only design projects. There is a huge field as a designer, not of tangible objects, but of many other things. So, for me, that is the challenge: to understand that architecture has that potential, that ability to solve unique problems. We, architects, have never been sufficiently aware of what we do and how we do it. How would you define the architect's way of thinking? We do things that have a background that comes from very far away in a relatively automatic way. It is a whole way of thinking that has consequences that go far beyond architecture. For example, one of the things an architect can help with is solving problems that have no solution, no linear analysis, and where different layers must be superimposed, where the answer is not optimization, but a kind of virtuous compatibility, where interests, point of view, requirements, and other variables are integrated. Another kind of thing that architecture teaches is, for example, development by precise focus. We architects learn to move from a problem to a sketch, from a sketch to a thing and thereby advance to a degree of problem precision. And that's a different way of working, for example, than that of engineers or philosophers. What are the areas where this kind of thinking and prob- lem-solving could be put to good use? The language of architects is construction, but construc- tion as an expanded field can be applied to thousands of areas such as politics, social sciences, organizations, institutions, and companies, all of which are, in some way, constructions. Also during our training, we learn to cre- atively relate ideas and material and move quickly from one to the other. Imagine the leap we have to know how to conceive a building and suddenly have to think about a hinge; or to make a sketch, and then to be directing the work itself. And there is no obvious continuity between one and the other. The same thing happens in the management of an institution. You cannot go through all the steps to solve the challenges, you must make leaps, and conceive new alternatives. Architects should be specialists, not only in selecting options, but in creating them, and contribute from intuition and imagination to the real world.
la arquitectura enseña es, por ejemplo, el desarrollo por precisión de foco. Los arquitectos aprendemos a pasar de un problema a un boceto, de un boceto a una forma o un objeto y avanzar de ese modo en un grado de precisión de problema. Y esa es una manera distinta de trabajar, por ejemplo, a la que tiene los ingenieros o los filósofos. Y ese tipo de pensamiento y forma de resolver problemas, ¿en qué áreas podría aprovecharse? El lenguaje de los arquitectos es la construcción, pero la construcción como campo expandido se puede aplicar a diversas áreas como es la política, las ciencias sociales, las organizaciones, instituciones y empresas, las que son, de alguna manera, construcciones. También durante nuestra formación, aprendemos a relacionar de modo creativo ideas y materia e pasar rápidamente de una a la otra. Imagínate el salto que tenemos que saber dar para concebir un edifi- cio y, de repente, tener que pensar en una bisagra; o para hacer un boceto, y luego estar dirigiendo la construcción. Y no hay una continuidad evidente entre lo uno y lo otro. Eso mismo pasa en el manejo de una institución. Tú no puedes pasar por todos los pasos para ir resolviendo los desafíos, debes dar saltos, concebir nuevas alternativas. Los arquitectos deberíamos ser especialistas, no sólo en seleccionar opciones, sino en generarlas, y aportar desde la intuición y la imaginación al mundo real. Como arquitecto participó en la intervención en la Basílica del Salvador, en la Catedral Metropolitana y en la recuperación del Palacio Pereira, a la vez ha sido parte del consejo de Mo- numentos Nacionales y ha escrito mucho sobre patrimonio. ¿Cómo ve el estado de la protección del patrimonio en Chile? Si bien estamos al debe en varios aspectos, comparado con el inicio de mi carrera, hoy hay mucha más gente preocu- pada de esos temas: es una materia que está en la agenda pública. Además, está la tecnología y el conocimiento para, por ejemplo, reconstruir el Palacio Pereira en los términos en los que se hizo. Y por otro lado, el patrimonio ha dejado
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Entrevista / Interview
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