From me, to architecture student, to architect, and back...

With time passing by i have come to realice the huge amount of skills that an architectect require and after that i realice that most of the skills that i have learn for surviving to this career, are only for the studing of architecture, and not necesarly for practicing architecture itself.
A person that study architecture needs perceverance, creativity, huge amounts of determination for not giving up everything every week, needs to be able of talking to somebody for explaining his idea and if necesary, be able to defend it against other arguments, but also needs flexibility when tries to integrate new variables in this idea, needs to learn to administrate his money, knows the limits of endurance that his body has when speaking of sleeping time, knows the kind of thing that needs to eat for saving time and last longer awake and healthy, the hability to put in pause a proyect while working in another and realice in that moment that doing this you always get new ideas for the first one, and finally (but not less important, and i have probably forgot a few) need to know how to relax, choose days to say for real "today i'm not doing anything", leave a few day in the mont to see your family and friends, this is fundamental for not going nuts.In the other hand, the skills that an architect need are for me two basic one, or divide in two big groups, first and architect needs enthusiasm for his work, feel pasion for the work that is doing; and second, an architect, specially one of The University of Chile most be ethic, when a doctor in a hospital made a mistake can ruin or even terminate someones life, if an architect made a mistake, can ruin or also terminate a big number of people's life, we most always consider that somebody is spending a lot of time and money in building this, and someday someone else will spend even more money to live in it, and our work is to make proyects that make spending this money on it worth it

feeling dry?

This is honestly one of the most beatiful places that i've visited in the world (and i've visit many).

It's call "Cordillera de la Sal" or "Range of the Salt" located a few kilometeres to the west of San Pedro de Atacama. This is a panoramic picture that i took this summer, i went there with my girlfriend for 5 days, we stayed in a beatiful hostal in San Pedro's centre. I like this place because of all the beaty you can find. The dust, the rocks, the salty air, while you are looking at this place you can begin to understand the way the whole geography of our country took form millions years ago.
Acording to cientists life is imposible in a place like this, because of all the salt in the ground, but you can still see a whole valley full of green and life across this rough piece of land, deep inside the driest desert in the world.
The feeling that you experience by looking at this scene is similar to the one you feel in front of the ocean, you feel small, part of a greater picture that you can't even dream of.
I strongly recommend to everyone to visit the north of our country, it's true, it's not as GREEN as the south, but you will find the beautiness of another kind of nature, you can see the same geography icons without any trees or forest of any kind interfering with it, you will see the enormous amount of colors that dust and sand can create, showing to your eyes the most amaizing pictures you can imagine.

Just to be clear...

This ain't a website that I enjoy visiting, it's actually a site that I MUST visit, at least this last months, 4 times a week minimum. You may think this is exagerated, but considering all the things they ask us to do in workshop, and all the data that you can get from this website in a very clear, fast and organised way, you will understand it all.


The site it's call Observatorio Urbano (urban observatory)

(you can imaging what this is all about)


The site it's supported by the MINVU (ministry of housing and urbanism) and was made for the distribution in the most effective and simple way possible of the data collected for the INE (nacional institute of estadistic).

Surfing through the different areas you can find information of population data, urban planning, georeferences, norms and documents of the ministry, and links to related sites

Of this options, the ones that I visit more often are "Instruments of Planification" and "Urban Indicators". The fisrt one mainly looking for the Master plan, sectional or regulatory plan, of a determined area or city. Urban indicators is by far more interesting because you have a lot more data where to choose (considering all the data that the government collect in census and stuff like that), from numbers of people in a determined area, city, or even block, to the percent of a determined quintil (of social indicators) inside a determined area, city or block.
All this, from every city in every region of the whole country.

Now that you know what this site is all about, and how accurate and fast you can collect a otherwise impossible data, you realize why I visit this site that much.
even though I don't actually "enjoy" visiting it, I do like it a lot. at the end of the day, it makes my life a little easier =)