Year: 2023
Category: Residential Architecture
I am Alicia Andares, Mexican, 46 years old. I love calligraphy, poetry, dancing, watching movies, philosophy and photography. I am dedicated to translating, proofreading, reading, writing, drawing, designing and sharing my vision of the world through words and images. I am not an architect nor did I study design. Recently I make a living preparing and distributing honey with turmeric, ginger and spices. I have no credentials or career as an artist. However, little by little, I have learned to follow my intuition, to make my own way, to leave vicious patterns behind, and to work to materialize dreams. I have been designing commands for AI generators that honor various people, artists and collectivities that nurture my dreams for the future. In the first instance, I am inspired by Iki, my 3-year-old son, whom I would like to raise in spaces where life is at the center of everyone's care. I am inspired by my partner, Sergio, a strong and tenacious man, with whom I share imagination and daily effort; every day he adds fuel to the fire of our possibility of building our own home, with imagination and material strength. I am motivated by the fact that my parents are still struggling to get the regularization and the property deeds of the micro house of social interest that cost them so much to pay for. I was inspired by my best friend, Pablo Mansilla Salinas, a Bolivian-Mexican architect, passionate about the Earth, eco-techniques, bio-construction and green projects, who has been exploring self-construction techniques for years, and with whom I share dreams and utopias. More than 20 years ago he showed me the architecture of Antonio Gaudi and Hundertwasser, and since then both architects and artists are engraved in my mind. Gaudi and his architectural approach, based on the conviction that nature and architecture should merge in harmony, and that function and aesthetics should be intrinsically linked. Hundertwasser and his proposal to appropriate windows, to grow next to trees, to incorporate eco-techniques of rainwater harvesting and green roofs, as well as to consider and care for our 5 skins has fueled my constructive imagination for years. Color, light and all the natural forms of the Earth inspire me; that is why I declare myself totally biophilic. I am also inspired by the curved line, the evident geometry of flowers, the exuberance of plants, cacti and succulents, and the greenery of hills, trees, fields, milpas and crops. I am inspired by numbers, symmetry, tessellations, the golden section, Fibonacci, Pi, the Golden ratio, the Rose of Venus, the spiral, the vortex, the rhizomatic and the fractalic, chaotic mathematics and quantum physics. I am inspired by rhythm and musical harmony. I am inspired by the daily changing celestial landscape, as well as the sinuous line of rivers, the fortunately little known ancient human footpaths, the cobblestone streets and the intrinsic beauty of the communal lands in the municipality where I live, where you can still find, besides dogs and cats, chickens, cows, horses, and even rabbits and cacomixtles. I like the silence at sunset; it is my favorite hour, because it inspires me to live more attentive to the natural cycles, and when the sun kisses the earth it seems to remind us that we do not fall: Earth and Sky support us: "as above so below". I love life in nature, but I am also inspired by those who have made their homes with their hands, in the city: the great tradition of self-construction of popular urban housing in my hometown and my country. I am inspired by the communities and peoples of Latin America who resist with their collective forms of life, despite the fact that the individualist onslaught is tearing apart fabrics and territories. The millenary wisdom of the native peoples who struggle against accumulated layers and layers of colonialism, dispossession, violence and extraction of all kinds of resources invites us to reflect on what kind of life we want to live, and how we are going to take care of what is left alive on the planet, how to get to live in the countryside or in the cities in new ways, that are respectful not only of the environment and the cyclicity of living organisms but also of the historical human communities and native peoples that care for and transmit love, respect, awareness of life and help us to understand the sense of reciprocity and mutual nurturing with the living systems of the planet. I am inspired by all the architects, designers, masons and self-builders who work with cob, bajereque, adobe, superadobe, straw, reed, bamboo, wood and recycled materials, fibers, stone and ecological materials of all kinds. I am inspired by the architecture of the Arab world, the arches and domes, the tadelakt, its leit-motifs. Philosophically, I have been inspired by Iván Ilich, Tomás Segovia, Theodore Roszak, Terence Mackenna, Simone Weil, and all the unknowns who have contributed and broken new ground in the arts and ways of doing and living more in accordance with human scale and proportion. I am inspired by my cousin Lucia, an architect, who started designing a lamp, and today is a super interior design consultant worldwide. I am inspired by women like Eva Capece and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui who have left the academy to work with their hands; women like "La Shunca" and Gaby Colmenares, who have tried to turn around peasant women; the micro enterprises and cooperative networks; the collectives of mutual support and individual personalities who, in spite of everything, after so much apocalypse, still consider important the own steps, self-determination and autonomy, the intrinsic poetry in the audacity of collective self-management and the construction of utopia. I want to learn to make houses and buildings, and I want to learn by constructing with my own hands. I make images in artificial intelligence generators for inspiration to feed our creative mind, to give us spectacular images that lead us to action. (My real name is Alicia Gómez Andrade, but I use Alicia Andares as an avatar name at internet)
This green building for a new life in Mexico City is inspired by Hundertwasser and Gaudi. We fled from the straight line. We recovered the relationship with trees; we integrated them into our spaces. The building can be mixed, housing and offices, but it has to have eco-technologies. It is in the middle of the city, and is even a bit gray like it, but the green brings out the life and contrasts brilliantly. I really like the green-gray combination. The design trend is organic, biophilic.
Alicia Andares
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