Sunday, November 24, 2022, 8:15 a.m.
An unexpected call from my tenants wakes me: the apartment I lived in for 12 years in the Bellas Artes neighborhood is on fire. I get up, and the open TV channels are broadcasting live footage of fifteen fire brigades and 200 firefighters on the roof of the top floor—where my home once was. A lit cigarette, left unattended by my nonagenarian neighbor, ignited the fire in the 1934 heritage building by national prize architect Sergio Larraín García-Moreno. The flames quickly spread through the oak beams, due to the absence of firewalls, engulfing the entire fourth floor—and taking the life of Mrs. Eugenia.
Just four months earlier, I had lost my father after a long and painful illness. I had closed temporarily my office—devastated by the social uprising happened in 2019, the pandemic, and a sharp decline in work.
Life has its ways.
During that same time, I was gifted a relationship, one that brought me a family who welcomed me for nearly seven years. Four dogs, three cats, and three teenagers made up an automatic team that kept me busy trough the difficult moments.
The apartment’s reconstruction was slow. What the fire didn’t destroy was lost to water, firefighters, an unusually rainy year without a roof, and months of debris removal. Nothing was left.
Rebuilding the same project is a fascinating exercise. It allows for refining the details that didn’t work the first time: new flooring, more flexible spaces, enhanced natural lighting, a full transition to LED technology, incorporating air conditioning into the architecture, and improving the distribution of certain areas.
And yet, the spirit of the project remains intact: all interventions in white; maximum use of ceiling height; integration of artificial lighting into the architecture; and a continuous, unified flooring that extends even into wet areas.
Although returning was never part of the plan, the end of that relationship coincided with the completion of the reconstruction. Moving back—temporarily—seemed the most reasonable choice at the time.
But returning to downtown carries multiple layers of meaning. It’s a return to the heart of the city as it begins to emerge from a social crisis; a return to a former home that literally rose from the ashes; and perhaps most importantly, a return to one’s own center—a metaphysical return to the self. A time and space for stillness, to learn from life’s lessons—both triumphs and failures—and to reconnect.
From time to time, people also need to rebuild themselves, and be back home.