Juárez-Perezlete, Rául

"The scale we work with as architects keeps, until the very end, the surprise of a real space, the way light enters, its sounds and echoes, its materiality." As a specialist in architectural design, the job of Raúl Juárez Perezlete is to satisfy the habitational needs of the human being without losing sight of the fact that architecture reveals the subtleties of a culture. To him, a building has so many layers of meaning that you can begin to read it with the physical aspects of the construction, its materiality and geometry, and continue with the social connotations its details reveal or the relation it has with the environment. It pleases himself to conceive a building just as much as inhabiting one because, even though the design phase foresees every variable in play, the finished work always brings surprises and, generally, many more than could ever be visualized on paper. To see his ideas erected on steel, concrete and stone, and knowing that they will probably transcend generations, is his greatest pride. Although constructing a building is what turns a project into reality, Juárez Perezlete thinks design is the essence of architecture since it allows to encode intentions. He makes the most of this phase by making references to other architects or even manifesting their criticism. However, he warns that the conceptual and artistic sides of architecture have lost ground against the timelines the industry demands, which don't leave time for reflection. Therefore, the challenge for architects is to be competitive without letting their work lose its meaning.