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.

A cardboard dome, ephemeral architecture made with threads, scenography models or a workshop about claiming back public space were some of the activities made during the festival by students, teachers and their kids.