During my university years, I struggled a lot with the creative process. Coming up with ideas for design projects felt like pulling teeth. Our architecture professors didn’t show us many examples of real buildings or existing works, so it often felt like we were creating in a vacuum. I spend hours, even days without an idea to follow.

I remember one professor who tried to help us tap into our creativity by assigning an “ephemeral” project. I wasn’t even sure what that meant at the time, but I remember thinking of a tree. I pictured its branches wrapping around something, and that image stuck with me. I ended up drawing a rectangle surrounded by abstract, branch-like lines. It turned out pretty cool and funny enough, that shape still shows up in my projects today whenever I can make it work. I became attached to that pattern, but at the time, I didn’t understand much more than that.

Today, inspiration looks very different for me from where I learned. I need to immerse myself in a variety of projects, collect references, and build mood boards with materials, textures, and images. I still need to use pen and paper. There’s something about the pencil on paper that sparks ideas in a way the computer never could. Lines drawn in software just don’t speak to me the same way, but I love using Revit to draw the entire project.

One of my favorite projects during university was called Atelier Project VI. We had to develop a museum design, and since I’ve always liked history, conservation, and architecture, I tried to bring all of that together.

I remember starting a conversation with my professor about the possibility of creating a museum inspired by one that had been demolished a long time ago. My intention wasn’t to make a replica, I didn’t want to copy it. I wanted to revive it. To bring back the story people once tore down, but with a modern touch.

She agreed with the idea, and I moved forward.
This is the museum I created—or better, recreated.

📩 Email: office@mariapiacruz.com