VALERIA VILANOVA

Portrait courtesy of Valeria Vilanova.

Valeria is a third-year undergraduate architecture student at Syracuse University and has previously graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon School, MA, and from Colegio Mater Salvatoris, in Venezuela. 

During her time as a postgraduate at NMH, she unearthed a natural passion for making and now enjoys using all sorts of materials to produce three-dimensional work, especially when experimenting with a medium or method for the first time. Valeria is highly conscious of waste and seeks opportunities to implement recycling and reusing practices in her academic environment. At Syracuse University, she is a class representative and part of the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee through which she has advocated for sustainability practices within the School of Architecture and installed ‘recycling stations’ which implement waste-reduction in the studios.

Valeria is profoundly devoted to learning and describes every day as a new opportunity for being taught. 

An Approach to Architecture Without Boundaries

What inspired you to study architecture?

When I was a little girl, my dad and I used to watch documentaries at night when I couldn’t sleep or in the afternoons when he arrived early from work. My favorite ones were How Do They Do It, Megastructures, Mega Construcciones and I was most fond of those about the ancient world. Still today, the idea that architecture is a living footprint of a past civilization leaves me in awe. As I grew up, I became aware of the sense of belonging that places produce and realized the poetic role architecture plays in our lives. Every time my family and I traveled to visit our relatives in Barcelona, I would inexplicably feel as if linked with its culture and history through the local architecture and breath-taking century-old buildings. Over time, the sentiment recurred and with it, my curiosity for architecture. Realizing that architecture knows no geographic boundaries, speaks no languages, and yet motivates people from all around the globe has inspired me to immerse myself in the study of the discipline.

Valeria presenting her project in the School of Architecture at Syracuse University. Image courtesy of Valeria Vilanova.

Name a woman architect who most influenced you as an emerging professional?

Lina Bo Bardi. Her architectural language denotes elegance and the structural expressions of her projects are unapologetically bold. The first time I saw a picture of the MASP, I spent three full days speechless, drawing, trying to understand the structure, the space, and the correlation of the two in the project. Particularly, I find fascinating how her practice in the discipline was driven by close attention to space-making, and while her entire oeuvre is a series of visually aesthetic icons, each of her projects shares a critical focal point on the human as the center of the design of architecture. Bo Bardi’s furniture designs reaffirm to me that the act of architecture is not limited to buildings and instead is unconstrained by scale further than that of the human body. This inspires me to design through spatial thinking and reminds me that architecture is essentially meant to be used, reused, inhabited, and reinhabited so it is the human|building relationship that gives architecture its purpose. 

Name a favorite project completed by a woman Architect. Why is it your favorite?

Eileen Gray’s E-1027. To be a woman in the early twentieth century and aspire to an architecture profession was often wishful thinking. To me, Eileen Gray and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg were remarkably determined young women to have thrived in professional fields overly dominated by men. Perhaps even, Villa E-1027 is my favorite project because it stands as a living reminder of how the role of the female architect has evolved —and continues to evolve— in the past hundred years. Compositionally, Gray’s Villa is a masterpiece. The design is a balanced mixture of Mies’ master of planes and Le Corbusier’s use of volumes; she designed her Villa with the same level of sophistication as not one, but two of the most known architects of the past century. Similar to Lina Bo Bardi’s work, Eileen Gray’s house —along with her furniture designs— is designed around the central idea of human being and performs as an artifact for human inhabitation.

Tell us about your artistic and architectural works. What inspires you to use different model-making techniques and unique materials such as toilet paper rolls to express your design ideas? How does it make you a critical thinker and a better designer?

Valeria enjoys exploring the materials she has at hand, such as toilet paper rolls. Image courtesy of Valeria Vilanova.

It is customary to overlook daily-life objects and tend to accept them as single-purposed (we tend to do this with: toothbrushes, toilet paper rolls, Q-tips, aluminium foil, white sheets of paper, and so on). On the other hand, accessibility to materials has turned into a capitalist habit: if it’s not sold in the store, it’s no use. I encourage you to defy this habit; using toilet paper rolls to create a sculpture was my way of dismantling the preconceived idea that accessibility to materials is dependent on a store. During my time in boarding school, gathering 40+ paper rolls on a 600-student campus took me no more than three days. I had not previously realized how easily accessible and useful they could be.  

Making — How Do They Do It? Image courtesy of Valeria Vilanova.

Relief — Valeria’s first exploration with this technique overlapping plan, section, and perspective. Image courtesy of Valeria Vilanova.

Expanding my design methodologies boosts my creativity, encourages me to constantly step outside of my comfort zone, provides me with comparable experiences and enables for improvement, and consequentially improves my critical thinking and design process. 

Seven Heavenly Virtues — Valeria’s clay work. Image courtesy of Valeria Vilanova.

What is your favorite physical model? Why? Tell us about how you produced it.

Two twin popsicle-looking artifacts casted on a custom-made container with a mixture of Rockite and acrylic paint, and balanced on flat bars of copper. I call these: Concrete Popsicles. Unlike most of my explorations, this model combined a multiplicity of materials I had never before experimented with, and the most enjoyable part of the process were the many mistakes made. To begin, I split a building of my own design in 50 slices to create templates to create the most entertaining cast. After cutting out each slice, I would put together what would later be the container by towering one slice of foamcore on top of the other. Right before mixing the rockite for casting, a classmate walked by and gave me a caveat: foamcore and rockite wouldn’t work together. The quick-fix was coating with blue tape on every slide of foamcore and voilá. I stirred together acrylic and rockite into one big bowl but neither the paint nor the rockite were enough, so when I tried stretching the last bits of rockite powder with more water than the suggested, the liquid started dripping from the sides of the container. This has been so far the messiest process with the most unforeseeable events, I loved it. 

Concrete Popsicles — Valeria’s favorite model using concrete and acrylic paint. Image courtesy of Valeria Vilanova.

As you reflect on the past year, what did you discover as your biggest strengths?

This past year has challenged us, taken away loved ones, and split us apart,

but it has also taught us lessons and ironically brought us together. This past year has given us the opportunity to pause outside and return inside: not to our homes, but to ourselves. In this journey, I discovered patience, discipline and my determination to learn are my three biggest strengths. March marks for me a full year of remote learning, a year distinguished by the contrasting experience of working alone from home, compared to working collectively in studios and classrooms.   

Some months ago I read the following quote, by Abraham Lincoln: “Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.” The phrase has stuck around with me through quarantine and has taught me that situations have two sides of a coin and the easy way out is always visible first. The long run requires patience and determination. 

If you were able to talk to your younger self, what would you say?

To my younger self: Thank you! For pushing the limits by for challenging yourself and never backing down, for being open to new experiences, and for putting in the extra hours. Thank you for enjoying day by day and for always carrying on a smile. 

You have gotten me to where I am today.  

To my younger self: read the news and place yourself in the global context. Read more books. Paint, get those thousand bad drawings out. 

Temperature Museum — Valeria and her classmate Tanvi present their partnered project at the end of the semester. Image courtesy of Valeria Vilanova.

What would you want to say to the next generation of aspiring women architects?

Question what you are taught, question the standards, ask yourself why and don’t settle for what others tell you is the ultimate truth. Educate yourself in the subjects that passionate you and keep your doors open to other topics which may, at first, not seem as intriguing. Be an active listener both inside and outside the classroom and/or workspace because we know the future is in our hands, but from how I see it, we first need to be conscious about the past and informed about our present. 

Take full advantage of your time in school and at home: read, engage and explore, never doubt your capabilities. Remember also that the process of making is, at its best, collaborative so don’t be afraid of reaching out to your peers and feel confident to ask them questions;  ask them about the process, method, and inspirations that drove their works. A conversation with a new co-worker, or with a student whose work fascinates you, could turn into a didactic experience. Most importantly, always, always be a supportive teammate. 

Valeria’s graduation at NMH — during her postgraduate year at a boarding school. Image courtesy of Valeria Vilanova.

In terms of rising concerns and problems (in the architectural profession) over the past year, what is one change that you wish saw would happen and it did not?

Waste is a significant problem, universities, schools, and architecture studio classes waste all sorts of materials at an alarming rate. Recycling, reusing, and reducing takes simple actions, but these practices are not as common as I wish happened.