ABSTRACT
In “Learning by Doing,” Rozana Montiel emphasizes the importance of design as a form of strategic thinking that enables creative solutions to complex problems, and as an opportunity to transform space into place. Montiel sees architecture as a platform for taking a stand, for acting with the agency to express beliefs through design. She advocates for an interdisciplinary approach to architecture that involves collaboration with different disciplines and communities to create a collective network of diverse perspectives.
Montiel highlights the importance of research in architecture, as well as teaching and learning as linked to mindfulness and the acquisition of knowledge. She describes a manifesto that guides her principles in approaching projects, which include standing ground, facilitating placemaking, changing barriers into boundaries, finding content in context, and seeing beauty as a basic right.
She is particularly interested in placemaking as a process that enables meaningful connections between people and different spaces. Through architecture, she believes that practitioners can detect, frame, source, and solve problems, contributing to society to design better places for the future.
