After nine years of architectural practice in both private and public sectors, I've been granted the opportunity to move forward in my academic skills by studying the MA Architecture and Urbanism at the prestigious MSA. The course pretty much attracted me as it mirrors the dynamics of my years of practice. Each project is unique and different from another, ranging from industrial and graphic design, to interior design and/or refurbishing, then changing the scale to plan a large area of the city, if not to manage the city itself. Architects are professionals capable of adapt her/his approach to the differences inherent to the variables of each of the aforementioned topics (and all of the other action fields related to architectural practice). Zygmunt Bauman defined nowadays' existences as subjects of "liquidness", fluxes moving around in different ways, finding their way into things that were apparently unrelated, now bonding in never-before seen schemes. Architecture is no exception. Following today's historic events, architects must, like never before, have a voice and make themselves been listened to. From viruses to global warming, social polarising inestability, new economics and the implications that smartisaton brings about, architects can contribute to important decision-making. Most of the global and local problems in our cities and places are related to our manufactured space. From the trash bin to the counter top, the kitchen, the house, the street, the neighbourhood, the town, the metropolis, the territory, spatial design becomes a fluid creating nexus between all of these. But the architect must remind that she/he is manipulating space, not for space itself, but for the living entities to co-exist in equilibrum. How do we architects can believe in ourselves and participate in creating the spatial nexus between all? That's the question this MA course has helped me to respond.
