Miguel Angel Aragones is a self-taught architect. He was born in Mexico in 1962. Having created rich and original architectural work over the past 20 years, the self-taught architect has won numerous awards during his career. He founded his own firm, Taller Aragones, in 1982. In his design philosophy, architects must engender emotion and soul into buildings. While living in harmony with the environment, it arouses people's sensory experience.

Yinji：What inspired your interest in design?
Aragones：Like any person I live sorounded by things but in a very crowded city, too much noise in every sense, what I need to live here is a kind of isolation, to work, to live, to breathe. I need my own air to create what I consider something wich is near to the beauty and in armony in wich I consider stethic.

Yinji：In your design path, how do you form your own unique and distinctive design style?
Aragones：What I really believe is that you need to listen to yourself, because is the only way to understand to others, in that way I feel that the style is the communication between you and them,  There is something wich is amazing, in the air every kilogram of air contains x grams of water, in that case we are breathing it, we are 70 percent water and every second we are driying us, some part from us is air and in the same air that you are breathing, you breath me and I breath you every second, I tried to be close from the people I like, because  I really believe in the memory of the water…

Yinji：What do you think of the relationship between light and space? 
Aragones：Light defines the space, both are consecuense of each other, the light are waves traveling with a longitude and frecuency there is a constant in the speed of the light, when you change one of them appears the color, the color is a distortion of the light. When you paint a space with light it will be totally different if you paint just the wall inside, with light you’ll always see the athmosphere painted and you’ll observe color light in the space, when I first did some example with this was with color glass reflecting on a wall and it was beautiful how the light reflect in the wall and paint with light, it was just beautiful, I discover there the potential of the light and that relation with the space physically. 

Yinji：What is your preference for light performance? How to choose beautiful colors for the space? 
Aragones：I remember 30 years ago we were taking a picture of a work I finished, it was a yellow wall, the photographer live the camera and it moves accidentally, when he came back took exactly that photo moved and appears some beautiful image, the color of the sky on the back beside that yellow wall during the sunset, it was a powerful image about color and about light, since that moment maybe without consiense I found to repeat that colors, at the beginning painting walls, after with light bulb, than it doesn’t exist leds but with another technology or adding color with glass, but maybe always triying to copy the sunset colors. In the nature you can find everything, there is always what you need but you need to observe it and try to understand it, that’s why I admire the scientists, they are always in that battle, my father was a warrior in that field. 

Yinji：What do you think of minimalist design?
Aragones：The minimalism is a battle trying to define the beauty wich is a great necessity with the minimum resources, the most simple work could be the piece that touch the soul, I believe in progress and I think the art  evolved too in different terms but in the same way, the most simple manner that you express a word and express what you have in mind clearly and deeply less energy you have waste to say it. Some sounds from Keith Jarrett or Handel express better what a tried to explain. 

Yinji：You have designed a lot of luxurious spaces, how do you think about luxury? 
Aragones：Ten years ago We received a recognition in Parson’s School and I perfectly remember a conversation wich create the people from the university around the mining of “Elegance”, I tried to explain this word as the “absence of luxury”, I have never enjoyed the luxury, I don’t like the word but I admire the elegance, this is something natural and belongs to refine and educated people who express things in a very natural way, there is something that belongs to them and you feel safe observing them and contemplating what you considerate beauty, it is something that it’s totally apart of the price and it’s part of the natural and simple things. I understand that sometimes the measure or the scale of the things could be big or inmense but is not this wich defines the thing, sometime you need that scale to create it but it’s the concept wich gives the dimension and the meaning. 

Yinji：Have you ever paid attention to Chinese design? How do you see the design performance under the cultural differences between each other? 
Aragones：Sadly I don’t know almost nothing even from my own country, but there is a concept and a word in China that belongs to Lao tse, Wu Wei, it means the importance of the natural armony with the nature, maybe I don’t agree in some terms and ideas that came from him but I feel the same necessity to be part of the nature and the world that sorounds me, the importance to mantain the equilibrium with the ambiance and to contain the air you breath inside the space you touch and you create.