Meet Fabio Alvino Roca | Woodworker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Fabio Alvino Roca and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Fabio, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
That’s a great question which I can’t pin point a single “why”, it took a great deal of adapting. I’ve always been very interested in all fields of science, litterature, history, but never good at understanding them, I realized this very early on in grade school. It was the arts where I felt most at home, which coinsedently is a great field to be in to look into the others without running the risk of getting bad grades or getting fired. I consider myself a woodworker and I see it a career full of poetry, physics and mechanics, material understanding, even history explorations.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Woodworking has been around since the beginning of humanity and will likely be around till the last tree falls, which will probably be the end of us, and its a special craft primarily because of how relatable the material is to us physically and emotinally. There are many people who do what I do around the world, but Miami definetly lacks this trade, which is an easy way for me to set myself appart. I guess since the city has a “plastic” and “luxury” reputation, whatever that means, wood is quite the opposite, it’s real and alive, and quite humble yet humbling. Nothing about what I do is easy; not so much the physical aspect of it but the psychological is where the true challenge is. It’s an occupation that isn’t exactly big profit, and everything takes a very long time to do. Many people have asked me for advise when interested in the trade, and it’s fascinating how uniterested so many get when they realize that there is no instant gratification. Patience and time are the most important things I learned, you need them both. You could have the most advanced and accurate tools, but if you dont have patience or time you’re just not going to be able to make much. Good tools are expensive, but the patience you learn with the lesser quality tools is crucial to the trade. These are pretty distracting times, you dont know what’s true or false, and what I would like to tell the world is that it’s good to not rush things because nothing of quality can come out of a rushed execution, you might think you’re solving a problem but you’re acctually passing it to someone else or just delaying it, and there is no progress in that.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I find the bay to be a very interesting place in Miami, it is about 50% of it’s geographical footprint and there is not that many people. If you can’t find access to a boat, than a kayak or pattle board will do, personally I think the beach is over rated, I’m more about that little sailboat you see out in the horizon you see when you’re looking out. And if you can’t have any access to any water, which is almost impossible to do in a swamp city, I would take you to the natural gems of the city like Deering Estate and Fairchild Tropical Garden. These are great places to admire the unique location Miami is in.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’m so fortunate to have so many people who support me throuout my life, but for the most part, my family has always been very supportive specially my mother, and a few teachers, particularly my high school architecture teacher Eric Hankin.

Website: http://fabio-designs.com/
Instagram: @fabio_designs