After graduating in architecture, you have studied ethnoarcheology. A key topic in your work is precisely the relationship between architecture and ecology, and the importance of learning from botanists, anthropologists and archaeologists rather than from architects. What is the role of architecture in relation to these disciplines?
I think architectural academia has to leave behind its corruption and obsession with fashion, forms and stardom. If architecture is to survive as a profession, the only way forward is to involve itself in the Earth’s issues, problems and threats. Architecture has to team up with politics to help perpetuate the sustainability of the Earth, particularly learning from botany, because plants have more vision than animals. The only future for architecture is to do what trees have been doing for millions of years: harvest energy, trap dust, pollution and carbon, provide habitats and food, work as a cooling system, produce oxygen, improve the general health of other species, and occupy a minimal footprint while providing maximum foliage area. The list is endless. As for geology, hydrology, anthropology, archaeology and other disciplines, I see them all as essential sources that offer serious architects the necessary tools to read the site and the situation before intervening, and also to take responsible, relevant, site-sensitive design decisions that are not just personal fantasies.