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

7 October, 2020

New book “Pandemic and lockdown seen through the eyes of an architect”

Author: Marta Miret

We are talking with Marta Miret, who has just finished her book “Pandemic and lockdown seen 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.

“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.”

“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