To live as we are

I believe you only truly get to know a person when you live with them. Their spirit and energy are revealed much more in how they move through space and interact with objects than in what they might say or think throughout their entire lives.

Patri, Cris, and I shared a flat 17 years ago. During that time, we were almost sisters, and since then, we’ve always seen each other at events, away from the comfort a home provides for letting loose and truly being oneself. This weekend, we reconnected in Patri's homeland, Lanzarote. I return from there proud of them, of everything they are.

In these lines, I will focus on Patri and her home, because today she turns 40, and because I want to write a post about how to infuse our homes with our spirit, but without a doubt, I could also write another one about the brilliant Cris, and I probably will in the future.

When you arrive in a space, you observe it, you understand it, and you realize that it promotes the development of a very particular way of life that you know perfectly and from which you learned a lot years ago, something magical happens. Very exciting: you discover the materialization of an essence, of a soul in a space. A space that envelops and embraces you as that person would.

When we lived together, Patri was a dreamy architecture student. Natural, transparent, communicative, creative, free, relaxed and efficient, organized in her particular chaos, home-loving, practical, bright, energetic, disruptive, a lover of good constructive work, of the vernacular, concerned about how we relate to this planet of ours, a great cook and, above all, very very "motherly" with us. Her way of life was quite different from what I was used to seeing back then; just to say that she didn't need private spaces, I think that sums it all up.

The home she has created in Teguise, where she currently lives with her family, is a reflection of each of her qualities. She has renovated a villa that preserves its original layout, which is unusual today, but anyone who knows Patri well knows that she has made it fit her way of life like a glove.

I believe that, in summary, at a functional level, it is a sequence of interconnected relational and transitional spaces (covered or not), to which, as if they were appendages, private spaces that never quite become fully private are attached. In the center, of course, is a large kitchen, where Patri cares for and shares with everyone who passes through.

The dazzling Lanzarote sun is another building material that reflects and imbues its energy into the lime stucco of each of its walls, where Patri has been researching different continuous sustainable coatings.

Instead of a garden, a vegetable patch surrounded by volcanic stone. Nothing is or is arranged as it would be or would be in a preconceived way: bedrooms at the entrance, a walk-through living room and office, semi-private bathrooms, and a kitchen that articulates everything. That's how she is, and that's how her house is. Everything is as she would use it. Details everywhere, but without complications.

Patri is very lucky; not all of us have so many square meters or so much freedom to arrange things as we please. Hers is a very particular case; she has resources, she is an architect, she has thought a lot about it, and she has a way of life that doesn't fit at all in a developer's apartment decorated with Ikea furniture. But we all, to a greater or lesser extent, can learn from her how to make our environments our own.

I don't think all souls need to unfold in such spacious environments. Here's one who happily writes from her tiny 50 m2 home, to which she returned after 4 moves because she didn't feel comfortable in any of her larger, more "normal" intermediate houses. And it's not because I get lost in larger spaces, precisely—we would probably live better in a self-built wooden house on the outskirts of a big city—but because this small house is the only one we've managed to make our own.

I believe the question is about asking ourselves how we would like to live. How I would do it. Not how it's supposed to be, nor how so-and-so will be comfortable when she comes to see me. No. Let's stop! Let's observe what we like, how we move, how we relate to those we live with, what our habits and routines are, what objects we like to surround ourselves with, and what means we have to create an environment tailored to us.

In this era of small spaces and rental homes, for those of us who don't have as many resources and for those who don't really know where to start, the objects that surround us are our great allies: furniture that can divide rooms or create nooks for our daily rituals, that can make a space versatile and give it a double purpose, objects that are memories of an experience or that support causes we believe in... In short, things that are within our reach if we choose them, that we would like to care for and cherish, that make us feel comfortable. That make us break free from living on autopilot.
That's what has worked for us. Knowing ourselves, deciding to live as we are, giving space to what we like to feel and do.
Let's choose and prioritize so we don't tiptoe around our homes.

Happy 40th, dear Patri!