Even though it affects every aspect of our lives.
Architecture is one of those words that I never really heard about growing up. I was from a low-income household, but my mother’s biggest bill was my private education. Still, the word architecture never penetrated my radar until I was in 10th grade.
The funny thing is I have always been receptive to the built environment. There are stories of my young years when I would cry because the places we’d go had “weird light” or “the tile was upsetting”. Mind you, I was from rural Puerto Rico, I was not one of those Puerto Ricans living in concrete mansions by the beach or luxurious high rises. But just as much as money can’t buy taste, I was born with a keen eye and intuition about when “space felt right”.
I saw my father build with his own hands. Benches, walls, tables, decks, chimneys, brick ovens. Nothing was too small or too big for me and my father to tackle. My grandfather was a contractor, he built with concrete and rebar. My father and I with lumber and rocks. Throughout my life, while I didn’t realize it, I had role models that taught me that building with your own hands was the way to go — the machinery was expensive and mostly quickly unattainable in the day-to-day budget of an impromptu project. In my eyes, building buildings was always attainable, as long as you’d be willing…
