You can never trust foreigners. That’s what my paw always told me, and I believed him for a good while — up until today, in fact. Today was the day I sat down with Andres Gutierrez ’12, a frosty Cornell architect of Venezuelan and Chilean descent. The man’s been hip-hopping across America since being born in Cincinnati, snooping around houses for years before finally landing at Cornell and dropping a little knowledge on the community at large. So, Andres, talk to us. How’d you sleaze your way up to the Ivy League?

Andres Gutierrez: My family is all chemical engineers so … yeah. I guess it started when my big sister was assigned some sort of architecture project in middle school. I was only 9, but I ended up doing more work on it than her, just playing around with it, and —

Sun: That sounds like cheating. You cheat up at school too, tough guy?

A.G.: I actually got lucky. When I lived in Miami, my dad moved into a housing development that was just being built. He flipped that house a couple years later and did the same thing in another housing development, so I would just wander around houses. Creeping around, you know? 

Sun: You are a great creeper, I’ll give you that. When did you start pursuing architecture in earnest?

A.G.: Well, up until this last year, I used to tend to bite off more than I could chew.

Sun: Probably all those drugs.

A.G.: What?

Sun: So Cornell’s architecture program is known for being pretty intense and rigid. How have you found ways to personal artistic expression while still appeasing the powers that be?

A.G.: They actually give us a fair amount of chances to work creatively. The school gives you a structure that you can interpret any way you want. There was a competition recently where students were asked to make a separation between two spaces — a kitchen and a garden, a bedroom and a terrace, you know — so I wanted to make my bedroom related to one’s personal sleep cycle. I had to do all sorts of biological research, and in the end I had a system of LED lights that would regulate your sleep cycle. I wanted to help old people, you know?

Sun: You’re the only one who does. 

A.G.: Architecture is a very holistic art form. You’re completely surrounded by it, it’s massive. As a cultural system, I like to use it as a medium for political thought — that’s where I get most of my inspiration, and even though it may not be immediately apparent in the end product, that’s where I get my inspiration. I did my IB paper on Gaudi, and he has this whole thing on man’s dimension being horizontal, while the vertical dimension is spiritual. Two of his main ideas that really hit with me are religion and Catalan identity. He creates these massive structures with metal cables, attaching weight to each one and hanging them from the ceiling. He would only determine the horizontal aspect, while the vertical was determined by gravity or, rather, something bigger than himself. His structures turned out to be ideal structures once flipped over … the weight distribution would balance perfectly

Sun: Perfection’s a good thing to balance. Thanks for coming by Andres, I’m glad to see the alleged rigors and inflexibilities of architects have at least one soul that’s been left unbroken. We’re glad to see you’ve still got some light left in you. More importantly, you’ve cured me of my illogical xenophobia. Illogical xenophobia has infected 12 percent of America. Get yourself checked today.