What is your name, current location, and current occupation?
Ana Cristina Vargas, Caracas (Venezuela), architect and social entrepreneur
What was your affiliation with MIT?
Alumni course 4, SMArchS Architecture and Urbanism
What was your thesis title, if you completed one?
Tracing Public Spaces
What are you doing today?
Morning starts early with my 1 year-old calling for mom from his crib and my eldest girl (3 year old) running to get him (or trying to..). My husband or I get him, we cuddle, eat breakfast and get dressed to be ready for the day. We take turns in dropping each one at school and go to work. I drive forty minutes from home to a rural school in the outskirts of Caracas where we are designing a park with the middleschool kids. They have already taken our design course with my NGO (Trazando Espacios) and made their proposals represented in architectural models.
Today, I meet with the photographer and topographer to a site visit and draw blueprints of the place where the park will be built. We are also meeting with one of our partners who will finance a safe drinking water fountain for the park and a specialist on water harvesting because on this part of the city there are no public water pipes.
After these meetings I run to the office because we are pitching our most ambitious project yet to our Giving Tuesday ambassadors who will help us raise funds to start build a Community Center in January 2023. This project will be built in a rural community, Chuparipal, located in one of the poorest states in Venezuela but one of the most beautiful, once called “The promised land” by Christopher Columbus. The idea of the project and design has been developed with the community and we are training them on how to fabricate CEB (compressed earth blocks) to make the walls and to start building during dry season, in one month!
Soon its noon and I ran downstairs to my eldest’s school (my office is next door…) and she is so happy to meet again. We go home meet with my little boy and husband, have lunch, they nap. I catch up with a last-minute meeting with my college in charge of site-work at Chuparipal to learn more about the last assembly meeting and the upcoming workshop to strengthen the role of women in the project. She is happy and a bit overwhelmed because after 7 months of community work, we will finally start to build.
My girl yells for me, nap is over. Soon my boy is up too and we have some tea and cake and get ready for the park. Work day is over, it’s fun with my toddlers now. I try to leave aside emails and enjoy the privilege of seeing them grow.
Do you think your career path has been unorthodox or nontraditional?
Unorthodox, I am an architect but I am also a social entrepreneur. I am constantly learning about fundraising, psychology and community work. I am pushing my boundaries as an architect constantly.
How did your time at MIT affect your career path?
Big time! I created the methodology behind everything we do at Trazando Espacios, the NGO I founded after graduating. But the most important thing was learning that if you have a great idea, build a strong interdisciplinary team and work hard you can create marvelous things.
What are you excited about in your career field today?
I am excited about how architecture with social impact is becoming mainstream. Alejandro Aravena winning the Pritzker 5 years ago was an important step, but every day I learn more about young architects who are interested in projects with social impact, pushing the limits of traditional ways of doing architecture and trying to be more inclusive and participatory in their processes.
What is advice you would give to a new alum coming out of MIT?
To make the most of every day at MIT. It is a unique time in their lives, an opportunity to learn, but more than ever to be curious and push theirs limits, because it is a safe place to take risks, to ask questions and not settle for the easy or obvious.
What are you trying to learn right now?
I am trying to learn how to balance between being a present and connected mom, and a professional in my field of work. I am also trying to unlearn a little bit of my preconceptions of poverty and to really go deeper into understanding the needs and possible help I can provide to people in a more disadvantaged situation than me.
How can fellow alums reach you if they want to speak further?
avargas@trazandoespacios.org, www.trazandoespacios.org
If you would like to add a brick to the Community Center in Chuparipal follow this link! All donations are tax deductible in the USA and UK.