Love made me leave behind a place right near my parents in Houston to join my partner in a town without a single restaurant. I'd first met my partner a decade earlier, but we'd reconnected more recently - while long-distance - over a shared love of stories, coffee, and baseball. From the beginning, it was clear that if we were to close the distance gap, it would be me who moved.
Die Sauna is free after 6pm, she said cheerfully in a mix of German and English, adding that all I needed was a towel. From that day on, sweating in the steaming sauna became my nightly ritual. I couldn't quite join the occasional conversations that bubbled up around me my German was very basic and my confidence level was hitting rock bottom. So mostly I sat quietly, listening, nodding, absorbing the rhythm of strangers unwinding at the end of their day.
Winning proposal in collaboration with Sergi Serrat to build the new changing rooms and a multi-purpose hall for a sports centre in Ripoll, a small town in Catalunya surrounded by mountains.
That's not the kind of country I want to live in. I want to live in a country where people are properly integrated. "It's not about the colour of your skin, or your faith, of course it isn't. But I want people to be living alongside each other, not parallel lives.