Third year already of the ETSA·TOPIA festival at the Architecture School of Valencia! I already wrote a little bit about last year's edition here but this edition of ETSA·TOPIA has been massive and nothing like you could ever imagine. This year's has meant the absolute consolidation of the architecture festival at the city of Valencia, of which I couldn't be prouder being part of the organization team and staff. We've worked a lot throughout the year, almost juggling with our daily homework, projects and stuff. But we architecture students at the Polytechnic University of Valencia are though and not easy to tame! It ended super smoothly although the usual last-minute issues and uncertainty moments always happening on this kind of events.

This year's topic of the festival was about transformation. Mostly about the profession of architect, but also, regarding our own transformation as individuals and as a collective, how to look for synergies and links to professionals and other disciplines and how not to take anything for granted. With two absolutely huge and first-row speakers as architect Anupama Kundoo and filmmaker, writer and journalist David Trueba as the main lecturers on the opening day talks, we had the chance to know how to think with the hands and how easy is to get the best of the world surrounding us on a super positive but critical way. As for some of our very crowded architecture workshops this year, we enjoyed a full day of building brick vaults (and loading them until collapse), a non-conventional photography tour, building architecture on wheels and so much more! As usual, we ended the three day architecture festival enjoying a paella on our Architecture School terrace filled with music and snacks.

So you might be wondering... How does an architecture festival relate to fashion? In fact, it relates a lot. If you've been reading Something Fashion for a while, you might know that I'm a big defender of the fact that fashion is architecture scaled to its littlest. Both disciplines call for spatial vision, care for materials, textures and colors; shape and form have an important significance in both design processes, and so much more! So, every time a couturier is working on a new fashion design, it's working with architecture at human body scale. That is what fashion means to me. And that's why these architecture events and festivals help me keep my mind open, help me boost my ideas about not only fashion, but also blogging; help me come with new collaboration ideas and ways to work with professionals of different disciplines, which is super interesting and enriching. A festival as ETSA·TOPIA in the city of Valencia brings the best in every one of us, teaches us how to teamwork and handle every situation and mishap, which also happens on every fashion studio, catwalk or conference you may attend to. Plus, having a paella lunch with your friends and inspiring people helps everything blend together!

Fashion and architecture are close to each other, and I'm pretty sure both disciplines can join forces and take the best of each to create amazing things. If not, tell Henry Van de Velde how he managed to get inspiration to match his wife's outfits to their house interiors. How cool is that?