Arly's Blog

My best vacation was undoubtedly in the summer of 2005, when I was only 6 years old. It was probably the longest vacation of my life because it lasted about a month in which I remember going to many places in the south of Chile, but mostly to Curico and Los Angeles.  I went with my whole family and my maternal family (brothers, mom and dad, uncles, cousins and my grandparents), so we practically moved to everywhere in something similar to a bus and there was always a lot of noise and fun, which I think is the main reason why they are for me the best of all despite my young age at that time.  My family organized camping trips, soccer tournaments, parties and we also visited beautiful rivers and waterfalls that, despite how small I was, I still remember very clearly. I also remember visiting a farm and living with many animals and picking vegetables from a very very large garden. For all these reasons I treasure the memories of that summer with a lot of affection. 

For many years I have dreamed of knowing a bit of Denmark or visiting the Faroe Islands (an archipelago that also belongs to Denmark but that is closer to Iceland) because I find fascinating its landscapes, culture and the cold climate that characterizes scandinavian places. Maybe I don't know much about the destination to be honest, but with the passing of time I have also discovered some architecture projects that are there that I would love to visit, mostly in the city of Copenhagen.  I have always considered that in the not so distant future I would like to live at least for a while there, I think it would be an interesting challenge. However I would like to do it as an architect and not as a student mostly because danish is very difficult to learn (I tried to do it once).  This is a picture of the Faroe Islands

 The subject that I certainly enjoyed the most this semester was "methods and practices of urbanism". We had two classes a week: one of them consisted of seeing the more "textual" contents, such as documents or more specific terms, and the other class consisted of working in groups on a project located in a place of our interest, applying everything we have seen in the previous class. Although we obviously saw urban planning contents, the interesting thing is that they were applied specifically to the San Ramon Fault (geological fault in Santiago, Chile). In this way, we delved into the problems of roads, sustainability, overcrowding, evacuation, etc. I liked the course from the beginning (and I would repeat it if that’s possible) because I’m very interested in this area of study, but besides that, the teacher and his team were always so kind and committed to make us learn in an entertaining way that it was impossible not to pay attention. And finally, I really ...

  The last year, an assistant of a course showed me a website called DIVISARE ( https://divisare.com/ ) to search for references and projects of interest. The site is a sort of blog with a minimalist look that has categories like projects, designers, photographers and books, which contain a huge amount of neat sub-categories to find whatever you can think of. For example, the one I use the most is “projects”, where you can search for ideas by type of construction, location, materials, etc. I visit it several times a week, at least three or four days a week because I really enjoy learning about different projects and every time I have doubts I go in to read. What I like most about this website is that it is very well organized and it’s so simple that it’s very easy to look anything. Besides, the person who recommended it to me told me that the information that appears on it is generally reliable and the projects are usually by very good architects.

A few days ago, a report appeared on TV that showed and talked about the problem of overcrowding that exists in some places in Santiago. And although it was something I already knew; I was shocked to see such harsh numbers and images. The notion that there are families of 10 people living in 30 square meters or 7 children sleeping in the same room left me thinking a lot and definitely I think that this is how my major -architecture- affects the world or being more honest: how it does great harm to the world.  Even though most of the time my field is also guilty of a lot of waste and environmental damage, I think that the biggest change it can make is more related to people. How? Trying, as much as possible, to make the quality of life of those who live in the places that we make be better collectively and spatially. And truly in the future I would love to contribute ideas, no matter how small, to make this happen.

I'm a big fan of taking pictures of everything that exists at the same time as me. My gallery is full of pictures of my family, food, skies, plants and my dog, but particularly this picture means a lot to me because Trinidad and Vicente, my nephews, are the most important persons in my world. For me it represents and shows many things that make me feel enormous peace. The warm light, my mom's plants, the blue wall of my old house are just some examples. This photo was taken in last year’s winter, just a few days before my hamster Hulk, who Trinidad was feeding with lettuce just in that moment, passed away. And not only that makes it special, also remembering how much those two little kids respected and loved that little critter. Being sit on the floor sunbathing with these 3 was without a doubt one of the best scenes of my 2020 and I really miss it so much!

One of my favorites preparations without a doubt are cinnamon rolls. If you don't know what it's, well.... It consists of a sweet dough "stuffed" with cinnamon powder, butter and brown sugar that is rolled up and usually has toppings or a sugar or cream cheese icing. They're easy to made but require a little time and patience the first times that you prepare them because the dough has yeast in it, which means that you have to wait for the yeast to activate and the dough to rise.  It's one of my favorite dishes because I love sweet things especially in winter (literally, a cup of tea and a cinnamon roll can fix anything). Besides, a while ago I made them for the first time and my family really loved the result and then I made more for my "fau" friends and for some reason it became in something that represents me. In fact, my friends always send me a picture when they saw or eat one. But obviously, like any cake or sweet preparation with a lot of sugar...