Xochitl Gonzalez talks of race and class through memories of a boisterous neighbourhood that no longer exists, yet her recollections paint a lively image.

If in silence, one can begin to question what it holds –or once held–, from Gonzalez’s text, it becomes clear that life used to be a lot louder. That loss is more than a lack of noise; it’s a violent act, part of a wider process of repression and what she calls “an aesthetic to be revered.”

It made me think of cities in sounds and silences. Different silences exist. There is the warm oneiric stillness of a warm summer day, when time seems to halt: I imagine Palermo and its yellow stones, that silence is warm. Or when quiet fills every corner, early on a holiday morning, as there is no need to wake up and rush. Those cities are silent but not silenced; the one Gonzalez describes is muted. Noise and sounds become a common good and a shared space, beyond simply a heritage to preserve.

I came across Gonzalez’s essay in the Atlantic some years ago –by chance, as it is often the case– through the magazine’s newsletter. Professionally, 2022 was an interesting time for me, as much as a challenging one, as the previous year I had come back to practice after completing my Part 2. This return to studio work proved difficult.

So I put some distance between me and architecture, to try and understand where I stood within this profession now that it had become clear that designing and building were not my call. I have always been a voracious reader, but this was the moment I started thinking about writing too, and in far more depth, questioning: if I wanted to write about architecture, how would I do that? Personally, I am not interested in an architecture only made of form, that does not include the voices and the stories.

Gonzalez’s text is a thoughtful, if nuanced, form to approach the topic of cities, and one that I would like to carry into my own: not a scientific inquiry but rather a picture of living, made of buildings and squares but also encounters and exchanges; giving space to experiences and, why not, a personal voice too.