A Life More Wild - Series 5, Episode 2

Season five of A Life More Wild continues as we walk in Battersea Park with artist and architect Claudia Robalino. She examines how her relationship with nature changed when she moved from her native Ecuador to London, and how it influences her art, life and work.

We are now in Battersea Park. It's a beautiful, sunny day. It feels like summer, but is, for me, it's a special place, because I find here some sort of peace and connection with myself, it has become like my ritual, where I come every single day, no matter what, in the morning, before I start working, or the evening, after working, so I can disconnect or just find my little moments. And I come here, put on a podcast, or go for a run, bring a book. I've taken naps in this park, you know, so it's my, kind of like, my safe place in London.  

We're gonna walk in the little trails inside the park near the lagoon, and yeah, where it's quieter, we can see the nature already starting to bloom around.  

I am trained as an architect. I grew up in Ecuador all my life, until six years ago, that I moved to London and I studied architecture at the Royal College of Art. But between that experience of studying in architecture in a school of art, and having grown up in a city in the middle of the Andes, and with all the information that that comes with, distancing myself from, from my home country brought me a lot of perspective on what I wanted to do. So at the moment, I am an architect, but my focus is in storytelling, through materials and through rituals of making and care, and that's what I'm focusing now.  

We are in this kind of like square in the middle of the park. It has this lagoon. People are sitting around reading their books. There's a few couples talking to each other, playing with their dogs. Yeah, some birds around. I can hear. What time is it? If I think it's like 1pm. It’s the middle of the day, and I think everyone has come here for a break.  

There's definitely so much nature in Ecuador, and my connection to it when I was growing up, it was, I didn't really realise it. It was not something obvious for me. It was just part of who I was, my everyday, my, help people interact with each other is is interconnected with nature, and it's part of our culture. And Quito is in the middle of the Andes – full of volcanos. You can take a 30-minute ride, and you are in one of the biggest volcano, active volcanos in the world. But then also, in three hours, you are in in the Pacific Coast in three hours you are in the Amazon. So growing up in a place in which it was really easy to move around, really easy to have this diversity of landscapes, I guess that fit into, into my into my system, and into my interest. And what's wonderful about Ecuador is that it has so many different communities and cultures. Indigenous people from the Andes maybe are more connected with civilization. But then if you go to the Amazon, there is all these amazing indigenous communities, each one with their own culture, with their own language, and you can learn so much from them. The Waorani is an indigenous community of the Ecuadorian Amazon. They live and they have inhabited this territory for centuries, as well as other communities and other cultures of the Amazon. But they're based in the most diverse place per square metre in the world in terms of flora and fauna and so yeah, they live and they have cared for this forest. They have domesticated, and it's wonderful to, to be in touch with them and to have researched them, because actually research with them, because you can learn the importance of, of the Amazon. But most importantly for me, what I've learned is the role the woman play in domesticating it and preserving the forest.  

There's this theory about the carrier bag, which is an essay that speaks about how we need to look into the we have in the western view, looked at the male figure as the hero, the warrior, you know, this saviour, and we have not really looked at what was happening on the other side, which is woman as nurturers of society and carriers, carriers, in the literal sense, carrying the bag, carrying food from one place to another, carrying the fish, carrying the children in their arms. And it's a wonderful form of looking at it is this idea of the passing of information and the oral history. The value of oral history has happened within these moments of caring and nurturing between women and across generations, yeah, and across cultures.  

I, I think we need to consider architecture. What's the purpose of architecture? We need to question it, and then we need to consider that everything we do is affecting, for good or bad, the natural world, and whether it's the things we see physically, you know, like the trees, the plants, them, they're more than human, but also is the unseen, which could be the air, the bacteria, the, the clouds you know, and all the information they hold. So that's why I think architecture should reframe its purpose and should maybe work towards a more caring and also a more adaptive form of design. The design should be, should have a research behind it, and it shouldn't only be something aesthetic, although it's also important for it to, to be beautiful, right? But I think most importantly is for this, for us to like, engage in a conversation and in a in a dialogue with the site. If we are proposing some special interventions in any scale and the site. By the site, I mean the people who inhabit them, the traditions, the culture, the history, and, yeah, nature more than human sense.  

You know, when I when we were talking about the Waorani people, and then living in a place like the Amazon, right? They still build they build their houses, they, their shelters, their schools, you know, but the way they build it is, through a form of understanding how the forest behaves, and how they behave and their needs as well. So, since they're in this very, very close relationship with the with nature, they understand how to how to build for this form of relationship and domesticity and, and that's quite like an interesting example of how architecture can, not really affect the environment, but it can actually even benefit it. And, and it. Yeah, it goes up again to this idea of cyclicality and cycles and being self-sufficient and learning from what we have with us, not really, not. It's not necessary to look for something that is far away or a material that is not accessible here, an aesthetic that doesn't really work with the weather and the temperature and our surroundings. And I would say architecture should understand its location, but also should and should be designed for humans, and for them more than human inhabitants. How it's going to affect that I think it can be learned and improved if we are more connected with where we are, you know, like we are of serve, if we contemplate more, if we are a bit more curious about the plants in the front garden, or the weeds that look like weeds, but actually can be beautiful flowers. And I think it's about that. It's about like understanding where things are coming from, and then also understanding that architecture is not just building, but is experiencing, is researching, is observing these forms of interactions and behaviours.  

I choose architecture when I was in high school, like I knew that was what I wanted to do. Looking back, I don't know if what I was interested was in architecture itself or this concept of space and the body and how we move around it, how we behave in specific spaces, how we interact with each other, which is kind of the way that I see architecture now, and it's something that was always part of my interest, but I decided to study architecture because of those, that intimacy that happens in different scales. I think, I think I wasn't aware of that, but it was what drew me to it. It was this concept of domesticity and space, and how we can inhabit these different spaces, depending on, on the site and the landscape and the and the culture of a specific site, those were kind of like my first interest in architecture, but now I see it as something much more profound and deep. And I don't see architecture as necessarily something that is to build something, but is to understand, to understand how we appropriate and how we interact with, with each other, with animals, with plants, with other beings in a specific surrounding. And I think there's so much about it in relation to storytelling and, and the passing of information from one generation to another that kind of like dictates these behaviours, and it also dictates how we in this process of inhabiting, how we appropriate spaces differently. And for example, how we have dinners in one place in the world versus in other places is completely different, right? How they appropriate these spaces as communities and as individuals, that's something that is really beautiful about architecture, that and probably something that we should consider now is architecture is not a, with all the climate crisis, you know, and all these things happening around the world, maybe we should look at architecture not something just to, to build or to appropriate and or extract even materials, but how we can actually inhabit what we already have and adapt it and adapt ourselves as well and be more humble with our surroundings.  

When I come to the park to take these nature breaks, I think they're very instinctive. I don't really come here with a plan, just come to move, what I would say is the thing that I do most in the park is walking. And I guess it's something that started in London, like walking. Is always everything we do, right, like in our daily lives. But if you kind of start understanding walking as a form of creation is actually really beautiful, like it has, it could become a research practice and a form of making. So being emotion, I found I get all my ideas when I'm in motion, like, if I feel stuck, I go out for a walk. It's something, you know, some people take a shower. I come for a walk. And it's, yeah, it's, it has also created this interesting link as well between, for example, me and my and my dad. Whenever I, I go back to Ecuador, the moment in which we actually connect, is working. So we kind of like take a day, an hour every day go to a trail path and walk. That's when you actually start feeling as well, I feel like walking also keeps your thoughts in flow.  

Now in London, I find my ways of interacting with nature, not only through walks or coming to the park, but I think it's mostly in my ways of creating, so creating through natural materials, through processes that take a long time, probably such as weaving. You know, like weaving requires its own process of getting the fibres, tying the fibres, of setting up the frame, if you're gonna do it in, like a loom or your own, your own form of weaving, or, for example, doing, using clay once in a while, like, when I want to disconnect, I just like, go to a clay, use my hands. I guess these are also forms of connecting with nature. Is through making, like, actually putting yourself out there and interacting with some material physically, you know, like, and changing it and shaping it, and also letting that material change you.  

We're heading to this secret garden, you're gonna see. It's really beautiful. Intimate –  only people that know the park actually come here, and during spring, it's actually you see the most amazing cherry blossoms, so many wild flowers. Feels like, this hidden gem inside the park. I think I have my favourite places in the park. One is, this one. One is this garden, the other is by the river where the Buddha Pagoda is from. These walks, I've taken lots of inspiration, but I don't really know if it's something tangible. Probably they do have some tangible effects in me, but I feel most of the inspiration has come from walking here and then having a perspective about like, distancing myself a bit from my daily life, and setting everything into perspective, and also understanding who I am in London and who I am in these changes of seasons, that it's hard to explain. But when you grow up in a place that is warm all year round, like sunny all year round, and sometimes these moments, like today, that is, the sky is completely blue, are treasures for me, in a way, these little treasures that I kind of like, have managed to understand and accept them and enjoy them as well and also enjoy the seasons through my walks in the park. It's really funny how, like, I can think about three months ago wearing so many layers, and then probably tomorrow, I'll be wearing three layers again, but today I'm not. I'm just wearing one. So, yeah, I think it's really interesting, especially the connection to my body through the through the walks and my time in the park.  

Take a look at Claudia’s film or follow us on our socials to see behind the scenes footage from recordings and a few extra questions we asked each guest. 

A Life More Wild is an 18Sixty production, brought to you by Canopy & Stars. Production by Clarissa Maycock. Our theme music is by Billie Marten.