Visions for the Territory: Cazú Zegers on Being Open Hearted and Original
by Amy Stone
María del Carmen Zegers García (Cazú) was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1958. Since 1990 to this day, she dedicates her time to the free exercise of the architectural profession. The transit through different scales is what characterizes her studio’s projects. They go from the object design to a larger scale and territorial solutions. She has also ventured into cultural management and created the +1000Foundation, which, among other things, seeks to position the city of Santiago as the "Outdoor Capital of Latin America." She actively participated in the organization until May of 2021. She is a prominent lecturer, n Chile and abroad.
Cazú Zegers is also a world leader in ethno-architectural investigations and implementations. Her artistic method characterizes through the poetic word and the territory itself, generating a unique architectural methodology (gesture, figure and shape). This has been one of her many legacies as a teacher and recognized architect. Her ideas are reflected in generations of architects of various schools of architecture such as: Talca University of Chile, Universidad del Desarrollo de Chile and Yale School of Architecture in New Haven. She has been able to develop, alongside her studio, a contemporary language in timber and other materials thanks to the observation of ancestral and vernacular techniques and vision known to indigenous people in Latin America and its hybridization with modern and sustainable solutions.
In her conversation with Amy Stone, Cazú talks about her identity and of architecture as a means to express it, advising those just starting their careers to be wild and undeterred with their ideas and experiments.
AS: How did your interest in architecture first develop?
CZ: What I would say is not that I found architecture, architecture found me. When you’re finishing school, you have all these ideas, but it is difficult to define what you want to be. I was passionate about all the arts and also about the origin of life, like biology and astronomy. My mom took me to a visual arts woman who was fantastic. She said, “If you want to do art, go to the best of the elite: the Universidad Católica in Valparaíso.” In this university, there was a strong artistic and original movement at that time; so if you wanted to study the arts, this was the place to go.
There was this poet as a professor, who was one of the founders of a movement and vision so unique for Latin America (known today as Amereida). He and I spoke in a small cafeteria at school. I would say that those conversations really inspired me in new ways of creating that honestly touched my heart. It was in that moment that I found what I was looking for; it was all in this particular vision for Latin America. So, it’s thanks to the poetic view of the world, that sense of the Latin American territory and Amereida that I’m an architect, and Godofredo Iommi, this founding professor became my mentor.
Copia de Tierra by Addison Jones.
Interior Patio of Casa Esmeralda. Photo by Juan Purcell.
What did you learn about yourself while you were studying architecture?
I learned to be a warrior, because I was a very shy person. I still am. I had to develop ways to communicate.
During my first year of university, when I had decided to be an architect, the older teachers would say that women couldn't be architects -- that they didn’t have the abstract mind needed to be an architect. I’m not joking! Women didn’t have space or a voice in schools, so we had to find ways. I strongly believe in the process of breaking barriers. Godofredo, my mentor, gave us voice creating the poetic acts, where only female students could perform.
I always go back to this letter that the French poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote to his brother. In this letter, he described to him that women will be poets and will discover new worlds that the men aren’t able to go in. It will be in that moment that women would stop being considered as something less than men.
How did you get started in your career?
In my third year of architecture, I was under an extreme amount of pressure. Almost everyone has a nervous breakdown around that time. I had it. Some friends invited me to go dirt biking. That really pulled me out of this bad energy and gave me new energy. I paused university for a while and I went in motorcycle competitions with men for six months.
That really healed me back. When you are healed, love comes. My boyfriend at that time started going with me to the motorcycle races. At that time, I felt immortal and powerful on this dirt bike. He saw that I was taking too many risks and he wisely suggested, “Why don’t we sell this motorcycle and buy another one and we travel around Chile?” It sounded like a good deal!
We rode through all of Chile´s, 4,000 kilometers, through the coast and through the mountains. We travelled lightly and ate with the local people. I started understanding the territory, the way the people live in the territory, what they eat and how they develop their culture.
Chile is this long country where we have the Andes range for one side and all these rivers that come from the Andes to the sea. When you look at the transversal map, these rivers divide up regions into their own territories. Each one of these landscapes has their own culture. There’s the north, with the driest desert in the world; the center, with all the rich agricultural valleys; the south, with lakes and volcanos; and the deep south, with glaciers and ice territories unexplored. This trip really put the territory in my body because of how I experienced everything in it. That’s why I have made a career in being an architect of the territory.
“Life is not separate from professional life. That’s a duality I feel all women go through; you mix it all together.”
That’s such a unique answer. I ask how you started architecture, and it wasn’t directly about architecture, but about leaving school and experiencing the landscape of cultures of Chile.
Walk me through the significant moments and milestones of your career.
I always said we have to build originals in Chile and in Latin America. I have this saying: “The territory for America is just like monuments for Europe”. But we tend to imitate other cultures and we needed to be original and to think about this land and this country.
I think that my skills come from the arts. I always find myself represented by saying I am an “ama”. It’s a type of word play since in Spanish “ama” means “the owner of the house” but it can also reference to an acronym for “artist, woman, and architect: artista, mujer, arquitecta”. That is the aim of what I have been doing. I finally understood that I am really an artist, and architecture is my artistic support. That is one of my milestones as I shaped my career. Each project has a deep conceptual reflection, everything has a meaning.
After school, I faced a lot of rejection from different places. Eventually, I started doing my own thing. I started working on people’s stores in Santiago. Then from the stores, somebody asked me for a house.
My first house, I named “Casa Cala” because it is inspired from the Calla flower. The house itself is shaped from a gesture and figure which I made from drawing and sketching the surrounding territory and a calla flower. This is also where my methodology is born, where all my future architectural process would start from the identification of a gesture, a figure and then it’s form. I call Cala House my thesis house. Moreover, that house won me the first version of the Latin American Prize for Architecture. That was huge. I thought it was not possible that I had won this prize with my first house! With that recognition, I initiated my career as an independent and creative architect. That led me on to other projects, including Tierra Patagonia, which has been such a highlight.
Dibujo Original by Cazu Zegers, of Casa Cala.
Casa Cala by Cazu Zegers.
Casa Cala by Cazu Zegers. Photography by Cristina Alemparte.
How has motherhood played into your career?
Some women don’t need maternity, but for me it was important to be a mother and have a child. I think Clara, my daughter, and Cala house came together. In many of my lectures, I show a slide with my career in relation to Clara growing. Life is not separate from professional life. That’s a duality I feel all women go through; you mix it all together. Raising Clara was something fantastic.
Where do you see yourself in your career today?
I’ve reached a point where I feel like I have a lot to give back. I understand what I have been doing with architecture throughout all my career so far and I am in the position now to make that even more precise and powerful. I believe I have gained an ability and expertise that allow me to create architecture in bigger scales.
I built the house where I live now, Casa Soplo, which is a liberation of the feminine aspects of being. With that liberation process, there has been this understanding that we have a lot to give and to balance. This is fundamental. If we, as women, don’t liberate and take leading roles to rebalance life and our relation with mother earth, we won’t have a planet in a few more years.
It’s interesting how the message at the start of my studies, which categorized women as unable to do architecture, has always motivated me to search for those feminine aspects of life and has led me to a more sustainable way to see and do architecture.
“You have to trust your craziest ideas and follow them. They always come with intuition and creativeness, with something new and never seen before. Don’t question them. Don’t try to be correct. Be wild. ”
Looking back, what have been your biggest challenges?
A great challenge has been being able to find the right team and to build a team of professionals and collaborators that are balanced and integrated human beings. It’s been a challenge to find those people who are above that “alpha male” position and who can collaborate on a shared vision.
Behind every professional challenge, we find personal challenges in life which shape who we are today. My marriage was a big challenge. We’ve been divorced for about twelve years and I’m still recovering and discovering who I am, what I am doing, and how I want to live my life and how I want to create. That understanding has been very fascinating.
I really appreciate your honesty about your challenges. Unsuccessful relationships can have the biggest impact. Conversely, what have been your biggest highlights?
The process and the building of Casa Cala was a great highlight which was accompanied by my marriage and the birth of my daughter, mixing both personal and professional highlights in life because I learned to trust myself as an architect.
The great challenge — and sometimes problem — is that when you are dealing with originals, you don’t have certainness beforehand. The recognition from projects, from awards can help lend a sense of certainty and give a sense that where you are going is correct, those are always big highlights because it keeps you moving and creating.
Who are you admiring right now?
I admire people who are making a career in a search for honesty and those who are trying to create a dialogue with the architecture or project’s surroundings. Those who are changing the ways we think about architecture in order to take care of our planet and people.
Casa Soplo by Cazu Zegers. Photography by Isabel Fernandez.
Casa Soplo. Photography by Ana Maria Lopez.
What is the impact you want to have on the world? Do you have a core mission that really guides you?
My mission is to create beauty and to give people a better life quality and to make this world a more balanced and sustainable and loving space for everybody, for humankind.
We are a part of the land, and we can’t live separate from it. We have to understand and learn how to relate. We have to be sustainable and respectful with the land and with each other.
I don’t know if you are familiar with of story that narrates a dream of a Hopi woman from the Native American culture? In this dream, the world was going to become balanced again when the ‘rainbow warriors’ returned. I think those rainbow warriors are the people who have opened their hearts. When you have your heart open and awake, there is light coming into the space of the unknown and giving a new vision to the world.
“...the message at the start of my studies, which categorized women as unable to do architecture, has always motivated me to search for those feminine aspects of life and has led me to a more sustainable way to see and do architecture.”
Are there any things that you’ve learned that you wish you could go back and tell yourself?
Yes, I would definitely say “trust in yourself and enjoy the process”. Understand that this is a constant game. You are a child and you should never stop playing!
You have to trust your most crazy ideas and follow them. They always come with intuition and creativeness, with something new and never seen before. Don’t question them. Don’t try to be correct. Be wild.
What advice do you have for those who are just starting their career?
Firstly, find your voice. Don’t go into these standard spaces – that same space that allowed people to say women can’t be architects. Just do your thing and if you can’t see a path then I suggest you invent your way. Everyone has a spark you should trust.
Secondly, it is so important to have the right team and the right collaborators. Find those people who see, speak, and defend that same vision. Nothing of what is done or achieved is done alone.