Since very young I have been drawing houses and villages. I was not the only child worrying about housing and dreaming about the perfect house. It is a common for children to draw and imagine houses.
I choosed my first boyfriend at the age of four, one of my neighbours, on the bases that he knew how to build a house, he showed me how to make bricks. His father was a builder and they were renovating their house, and for some reason they were making bricks. It was my first contact with ceramics but I did not realize at that time, or did I?.
The house we were living in at that time was old and quite interesting. It belonged to my father's uncle. It was divided in three apartments, connected not just in the exterior but also through corridors and narrow folding ladders. It was for me a castle and my kingdom.
My aunty and uncle used one of the apartments which was on top of the garage, but they were just coming for the weekends, my cousins were quite exciting, one was studying photography and the other was always traveling around the world and bringing little treasures, objects from exotic parts of the world.
The first floor was occupied by a family and a seamstress/ couturiers workshop. The workshop was a universe of gossip/stories, nice or not fabrics, fashion magazines, and the tools machinery of the trade, so interesting. I used to spend a lot of time there, sometimes hidden so they would talk more freely.
Our apartment was on the top floor an attic but spacious, I loved it. But we moved to our own house a few years later and I loose my kingdom, and my community. Our new house was bigger, but no corridors leading to workshops, we were on our own. It felt cold, boring, square and lonely. I never liked it. I wanted to move somewhere else.
I am still looking for a replacement of the lost house/community of my childhood. I have not find it. And with the years it seems more and more difficult to find something like that. I have learned with the time that there were/are/will be many problems among people living together.
With the years I have got to elaborate/consider how to better divide spaces, how to get the best of sunlight and how would it be possible to make a house more self sufficient on its energy consumption and waste disposal. And many other details concerning materials, building methods and concepts.
I ended up been a ceramist and not an architect. I like the making processes too much. I build from time to time ceramic houses. Sometimes they will swim, slide on ice
or walk, others are settlements integrated into nature and others are ruins recovered by nature.
I keep building
