Gloria Cabral is very excited at the prospect of working with Peter Zumthor and feels a sense of connection with him. “I see things in his work that speak to me directly. There is, above all, this sense of place – of being in harmony with the place – that I find very exciting… I hope that there will be a collaboration there too, that I can bring something and receive something that will help me grow,” she says. 

A sense of place

Gloria Cabral was about to abandon her architecture studies when she was given an insight that changed her life. A partner in an Asunción-based firm, Gabinete de Arquitectura, for the past 10 years, the 32-year-old Paraguayan describes her creative process and her hopes for the coming year as protégée to leading Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.

When I was young I thought I would be a doctor. I grew up painting and drawing with my mother, who was very artistic, and surrounded by the things my father fixed. He could fix anything – plumbing, wiring, mechanical things. He was always working on something, and sometimes I would help him, even go onto construction sites with him. So there was this ‘artistic’ side and this engineering side. It’s not surprising that I ended up studying architecture at university.

At one point I almost abandoned my studies – this was in the third trimester of my first year. I just felt very lost. I couldn’t see the point. And then I started having classes with Solano Benitez. He showed us his work and how architecture can be a tranformative force in society. Those classes changed everything for me. Solano ran a firm in Asunción called the Gabinete de Arquitectura, and I was just absolutely determined to work there. Luckily I was accepted as an intern before graduating in 2003, and I became a partner the following year. I have been there ever since.

All of the work we do at the Gabinete starts from ideas about bringing some benefit – either to the people who are going to use the buildings or to the city around them. The projects are very much focused on sustainability and respect for the environment.

Extreme heat

One of the best-known examples is the Teleton Children’s Rehabilitation Center, which won first prize at the Bienal Panamericana in the recycling category in 2010. The entire building was constructed from recycled materials, including bricks, tiles, tempered glass, wooden door frames. Brick-and-tile is very present in the work we do at the Gabinete because it is so well adapted to the needs of our region. We have to protect ourselves from the extreme heat with temperatures getting up to 45 C, heavy tropical rains and driving winds in winter.

The Teleton building is very beautiful, but I have to say I do not conceive of buildings solely as objets d’art. A lot of what I do is based on thinking about how the space is going to be used, whether it is for children to rebuild their lives as with the Teleton building, or for people to come together to celebrate, to encounter what is different, to dance, sing...

Our approach to work at the Gabinete is profoundly collaborative. We all work in the same space and start every project with a pencil and paper, an Excel spreadsheet and a long, long conversation. It is a way of working that I am not just extremely comfortable with, but which I believe is fundamental. We must work together because we are all connected and to be connected is to be human. It is also perhaps for this reason that so far nothing of mine – I mean of mine personally – has ever been built. I did produce a project – a plan for the urban development of Asunción – for my degree, and this is what I showed Peter Zumthor.

A kind of vertigo

Just to be invited, to put myself forward as a candidate [for the mentorship], was a gift. Then, when I heard that I had been chosen, I felt I had the world in my hands! I was scared too, but more excited than scared. It was like a kind of vertigo. I am very excited about working with Peter Zumthor. I don’t know how it will work out, but I hope that there will be a collaboration there too, that I can bring something and receive something that will help me grow.

Even though we come from very different cultures and work in very different environments – the day I went to meet him it was precisely 40° colder in Switzerland than in my home city – I see things in his work that speak to me directly. There is, above all, this sense of place – of being in harmony with the place – that I find very exciting.

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