Interview | Marta Miret: “The pandemic will leave a mark on what architects will have to work on”

Interview | Marta Miret: “The pandemic will leave a mark on what architects will have to work on” 7 October, 2020

We are talking with Marta Miret, who has just finished her book “Pandemic and Lockdown Through the Eyes of an Architect”. With more than fifty successful projects behind her and various accolades to her name, this architect from Zaragoza heard the call to become an architect at an early age. Which is hardly a surprise as she is a chip off the old block. Her father, Carlos Miret, is the prestigious architect and town planner who created the 2008 Expo in Zaragoza. Marta gives us her vision of the present and the future of architecture and how historical events like a pandemic, or the recent lockdown, can influence it.

Question. Literature, which is one of your other passions, is, like architecture, a reflection of the mood of every age. What leads an architect to write a book in total lockdown?

Answer. In this book I make a personal journey through my confinement and how I have experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. I passed part of the lockdown alone and the decision to write this book kept me going and pushed me through these turbulent times in which we are living. It was a transition, a search to understand the present and look for answers to face up to the future and to do my bit from my profession as an architect.

Q. In your book, you make a philosophical reflection about architecture. For you, what is architecture?

A. For me it has a major significance. My first visit to a building site was with my father at the age of six and since then I have been to many. It is a special connection with him and the world.

In general, there are many definitions. In the book, I point out that the essence of architecture is to create spaces and to create architecture we should understand what space is – I develop its definition in the book. Once understood what it is, it is easier to understand the whole meaning of the word. If we want to summarize it further, architecture is what occurs, or what is made, between the mind, land and society. Or as Heidegger defined it in 1951, after another moment of inflexion, as was the Second World War, Building Dwelling Thinking.

Architecture is to create a space in which one can inhabit, with the available techniques, contextualising it in a historical and social environment and with the poetry of who imagines it. We should not forget that it should always respond to the context of the project and that one builds for another. Architecture needs to be kind, agile and to respond to social needs; it is far from being only technique, although it is much easier to quantify it as such.

Q. Throughout history, different events have given rise to changes in architecture. To what extent does social and historical context influence architecture?

A. It influences from the moment in which the human being is the one who projects the architecture; also, when they project it for another. Architecture is a general reflection of society and it is possible to read in the architecture of every period the relationship that man has with the world and with himself.

“Architecture is a general reflection of society and it is possible to read in the architecture of every period the relationship that man has with the world and with himself.”

Q. It would appear that we can find the keys for the future by looking to the past. From the point of view of the architect, what lessons can we learn from previous pandemics?

A. Without doubt, all of the pandemics involved a profound change in architecture, but not only in it; also, in science, philosophy, laws, rights‌ In the specific case of architecture, for example, with tuberculosis we saw the importance of air quality and the conditions of the indoor spaces which we inhabit.

Spaces were built with specific ventilation and natural light conditions to not get ill, health care buildings, hospitals with ample, well ventilated spaces and schools were also modified. The pandemics of the medieval period lead to the Renaissance; those of the 19th Century, Rationalism. Cholera made us advance drastically and led to the introduction of new terms of healthiness in homes and cities. In the badly named Spanish Flu, people fled the cities for the countryside to avoid crowds and closed spaces and to stop the spread‌ What change could COVID-19 bring? At this moment, humanity is a prisoner of this pandemic, we can see the value that has been given to the room. It cannot be possible that in the middle of the 21st Century we still live enclosed. We have seen the unhealthiness that involves closing ten people in a small room. We have already learnt this.

Every one of us has to add our own knowledge and politicians have to know how to collect it so that all of this would impact in the society of well-being and would contribute to improve the life quality of human beings.

Fundamentally, I find 3 important points: agility in the change, a multidiscipline meeting of the architecture and a profound analysis to build the future.

After a great historic change (pandemics, wars‌), the population tries to adapt itself and an important breeding ground of disconformity is generated, in which each collective unites to think, generating an intellectual search towards what the future should be, take the birth of Rationalism, of the Bauhaus after the great cholera pandemic or the philosophical search of dwelling on the part of Heidegger after the Second World War. In the book I begin an analysis, but there remains much to think of.

Q. It is said that architecture has the capacity to heal. After the arrival of COVID-19, will the new architectural proposals take into consideration elements such as social distancing or the use of easy to clean construction materials?

A. I don´t know if it can heal. Those are strong words. Hopefully. Architecture should respond to the new needs. Today is the moment of reflection before tackling all the changes. This requires a profound analysis.

Q. Throughout the lockdown, there were those who realised that they lived in a place that they didn’t like. Some longed for a balcony, a garden, spaces with more light… In addition, there were many who had to convert their homes into offices, schools and, also, gyms. How do you think the lockdown will influence the architecture in the years to come?

A. I hope it will make us, as users, more critical and not conform to unhealthy rooms, nor cities without public spaces. We should inform ourselves and request what we need.

And, at the same time, as architects we have to be conscientious of the impact of what we do, be kinder and humbler in everything that we do. Also, we have to strive to inform and form, so that people are aware of what they choose.

Q. The lockdown meant that a large proportion of the population spent months working remotely. If remote working is here to stay, it is possible that part of the inhabitants of the major cities would look for a calmer life in smaller cities or rural areas, which have been left quite depopulated, and that companies would need less office space. Do you think the large city model is in crisis?

A. It’s always in crisis, but it takes a lot to forge a change. The human mind needs time to adapt. Evidently, the pandemic will leave a mark on what architects will have to work on.

Of course, it is important to have experienced the reality of the relocation of the new digital era, and once having experienced it, we can facilitate and accelerate the change.

Already in my bachelor thesis, more than ten years ago, (Project title: ‘Critical approach to the architecture by the cultural and historic environment’; abstract: ‘Analysis project of the form and proposal of rehabilitation in the village Albinyana, establishing

continuity between territory, urban form and architectural project’) as a base of the repopulation and economic regeneration of the village, I was targeting the importance of the new era that the internet was creating. Nowadays, it is not only important that a certain location is geographically accessible, but also you have to count on other infrastructures like logistics centres and strong broadband connection. And, currently, we can find a similar connection in an apartment or workplace in the centre of a large city and in a small rural village. This changes the hierarchy of the cities. With this I want to say that we have spent more than a decade visualising the depopulation which new technologies provoke, and, in the past months of lockdown and remote working, we have tested it and the process is accelerating. In Spain, remote working was not a common practice, yet there are many cities that already have it established; in large cities like Copenhagen, Stockholm or London, remote working several days a week is a reality. It results in an economical solution, by occupying smaller offices, and favours productivity and family reconciliation.

“We have spent more than a decade visualising the depopulation which new technologies provoke, and, in the past months of lockdown and remote working, we have tested it and the process is accelerating.�

Q. What opportunities can this reorganisation of rural and urban areas bring for architecture?

A. The most notable opportunity is that of planning with common sense, taking advantage of these moments of reflection to put the habitant, the people, back in the centre, to plan the growth.

Q. You conclude your book with a reflection about the place where architecture should head. What would you highlight about that place?

A. Considering common sense and the current context about where humanity is going on the planet, we are going towards a more sustainable, ecological and sociable world.

Architecture is a part of this; we have lots to say and we cannot put on an image of speculative and epicurean interests.

Interview translated / Original Interview in Spanish by Clara Estrada