Photos by Smashing Films and ChapelleMagazine

Valencia, last 29th April at Mercado de Tapinería. You know I'm always in vogue on what's happening around in my city: I always love to be involved on presentations and events, specially if there are young designers and creatives coming to show their newest pieces and ideas. It's incredible how many things happen on a city like Valencia if you're careful and hear for the right signals. There's fashion and great design on every corner here, both coming from traditional ways and their rich silk patterns or the freshest, sometimes crazy creations of local fashion and art students. I'm happy to know that I live in a city where being creative and having tons of ideas is awarded, and that you can walk into an event or presentation like this promoted by my friends at Chapelle Magazine & Mercado de Tapinería (which is a really cool place downtown where emerging, limited markets and stores or festivals happen some days per month) to get a glimpse of the newest trends.

Designers from Valencia and around were invited to take part into this presentation of the Special for Men #4 issue, "We can be kings" filled with music and snacks, a nice ambient and activities like a performance, the projection of a fashion film and a catwalk involving the pieces of VURE, Sebastian Chavarriaga, Móler, BlueBlue Chihuahua among others.

As always, it's nice to take part into this events to meet new people who loves what you love. Be involved!

Photos by trasotracamara

28th, 29th, 30th April. If you've been around for awhile, you might know we've been totally absorbed and super stressed for the last 6 months thanks to the organization and stuff around the Architecture's School culture festival (best known as ETSA·TOPIA), which emerged last year from a group of students, and which celebrated its second edition past week. The festival is not only about architecture, but also about cooperation between students, different associations and groups from Valencia and even other cities in Spain; about workshops and different activities as conversations, "Pecha Kucha" presentations or ephemeral architecture at the Polytechnic University campus. All filled with beer, snacks, the best mood and best young architects gang EVER.

The festival is all about having fun and make our School come back to life for some days. Because life (and architecture) is more than just studying and non-stop work!

This year's theme was "Plan B", which is about different options and perspectives, talking about both work and life. As future architects, we must be very conscious of our surroundings, the huge amount of design knowledge and ideation capabilities we have thanks to our studies and this edition was about all that: step out of our comfort zones and discover how many different paths we can take.

I had the chance to share these days involved into staff duties, which was exhausting but very fulfilling and fun! We were a bunch of about 50 people running up and down the whole building, dressed with those black & black T-shirts, helping with the snacks or the assembly of all the audiovisuals stuff among other things. It's been great, because this is the kind of things which helps you know how teamwork actually works, or how to manage a last-minute crisis. It's been a total change of view for me and a 360 degree experience to take part into all this. You could feel those really good vibes, that illusion just by stepping into the School, and I can tell those feelings are still around although the festival has already ended. That's the fun thing about it: the countdown for next year's ETSA·TOPIA has already started.