Olímpia Solà Inaraja

The first time I set foot in Barcelona’s Architecture School (UPC), a professor made us write on a small piece of paper what had brought us there. Most of my peers spent their childhood building houses and abstract constructions with Lego pieces; this was just the natural path to fulfilling their dreams. My answer was less romantic: the degree skillfully combined math, history, art, and a certain amount of anthropology. “Oh, and I really like cities," I would add. I must admit it, at 18 this seamed a reason enough.
It took a few months into architecture school for me to realize I had landed in the right place. In those first years, I learned how relevant and transversal architecture could be. This love and curiosity for the discipline and its interaction with other fields is what brought me to start “Coses Modernes”, a catalan cultural podcast, with two friends in 2020. Since 2022, it has been part of the cultural newspaper núvol.com (Ara.cat). Over the years, it has allowed me to explore many different subjects, from the housing crisis in most European cities, including Barcelona.
I was invited to publish a few articles on the Fundación Arquia Blog, and I discovered the many ways architecture can also be put into words. The attraction to theory and architectural research solidified during the writing of my final thesis, based on the process of Ronchamp’s conception. I learned the scientific approach to architectural research in the analysis of original documents, letters, and drawings. While studying I have worked as a children’s art teacher, as a film photographer in the Barcelona Pavilion and as an architect in the Muicipal Institute of Urbanism in Barcelona.
I believe that an architectural view of the world is important and necessary, and that is why next September I will continue my academic journey in Columbia’s Masters of Science in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture.