Matiak Seti
Matiak Seti | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 7, 1892 |
| Died | August 9, 1969 (aged 77) |
| Nationality | Zacapine |
| Known for | Cihuacoatl Bridge Lake Seti Xaltozan Bridge |
Matiak Seti (7 May 1872 - 9 August 1955) was a famous Zacapine civil engineer and proponent of many notable public works projects. He is best known as the father of Zacapine utopian philosophy and one of the key founders of the Tlayacanque political party, making him one of the most notable historical figures of the Cochimí minority of northern Zacapican. Seti was heavily involved in many infrastructure projects during and after the Xolotecate era (1914-1938), personally designing several bridges and pieces of infrastructure, co-designing and campaigning for the plans of other engineers, and serving as one of the important figures of the Secretariat of Public Works in that era. Thanks to his foreign doctorate and his role in creating large parts of the higher education system in Zacapican, he would become widely known as Doctor Seti (Tetlamatilizmachtiani Seti).
Early Life
Matiak Seti was born in 1872, the same year as his eventual patron, Xolotecatl Acuixoc. Seti hailed from an moderately wealthy family of the prosperous Zacaco region of northeastern Zacapican. The Seti family were accomplished cuacuauhpique cattlemen and had inhabited the region for generations, gradually accumulating wealth and standing within the local governments of the Aztapaman Zacaco. Matiak had been the third son of the family, and so was largely freed from assuming responsibility over the family enterprises in Acalcuixoayan and the outlying areas. Instead, he became interested in city planning and infrastructure as he had from a young age taken note of the underdeveloped and agrarian nature of his home region and seen the potential to improve upon the buildings and infrastructure of his city and the surrounding lands. In 1908, when Matiak was 16, the Seti family would uproot from their native Zacaco in order to flee the ongoing Zacapine Revolution which had by that time devolved into a destructive civil war which had destroyed or threatened to destroy much of the family's holdings in Zacapican. The Setis arrived in Latium as refugees, albeit wealthy ones, as they had been able to liquidate a number of their remaining assets and draw upon their generational wealth to finance their relocation. Although this was a difficult process for the family, it would prove to be fortuitous for Matiak as it would enable the young Cochimí man from rural Zacapican to access a higher education that would have likely been unattainable for him under different circumstances.
In 1910, Matiak would be entered into the Castellum College within the University of Castellum Iohannes XIII in Castellum ab Alba to be trained as a master builder and draftsman. As a student, Seti was noted to be enthusiastic but at times inattentive and prone to what his professors deemed to be flights of fancy. He would at times skip classes and neglect his studies to go on trips around his host country at the expense of his family's funds to tour the bridges, roads and railways, drawing sketches and street maps of towns and cities of all sizes. When this behavior came to be a detriment to his academic marks, Seti would be threatened by his father with withholding any further stipend until his schooling was completed. From that time forward, Seti became a model student virtually overnight, finishing the remainder of his training as a master builder in short order.
Career
Seti returned to his home country in 1916 and entered in a nation in upheaval. By the time Seti entered the scene, Xolotecatl Acuixoc had already consolidated his power as the Tepachoani of the new United Republics and had begun his ambitious program of industrialization which aimed to rebuild the war-torn nation in the image of a modernized state. As one of the few foreign trained professional engineers in Zacapican in those years, Seti found himself in high demand with various government departments involved in this process, and soon found work designing railway bridges, roadway embankments and other projects for Xolotecatl's regime. Seti's unabashed ambition when it came to the scale of his projects appealed to the higher-ups of the government, who shared in his all encompassing vision for a transformation of the country through modern technology and infrastructure. He became acquainted with the man who would become his boss and greatest advocate in the years to come, a certain Achto Moyocoya who served as Secretary of Public Works under Xolotecatl and the successor governments for an unparalleled tenure of 23 years from 1920 to 1943. Seti and Moyocoya shared a vision for the creation of a technological utopia in Zacapican, one in which all obstacles of the geography and climate of the country would be overcome and nature itself would be transformed in service of the Zacapine people. Seti had already begun to specialize as a bridge builder during this time, as the Xolotecate regime demanded the construction of many major bridges over rivers and across treacherous mountain passes to begin to physically unite the country with infrastructure in a way that had never been possible in the past. He would go on to oversee the establishment of an important metalworking calpolli in Amegatlan to produce the steel Wire rope needed in the suspension bridges he designed, contributing to the advancement of the early Zacapine steel industry. Although not as publicized as Moyocoya's efforts, which would culminate in the construction of the iconic Moyocoya Dam and the transofrmation it would bring to the arid Xallipan Republic, Matiak Seti was nevertheless becoming a politically well connected man in the Public Works Secretariat and a figure of great importance within the field of civil engineering in Zacapican.
By 1935, Seti had been well established as a leading figure in the world of engineering in Zacapican. He would receive the mandate to establish an indigenous program to train the next generation of engineers, city planners, and all the other experts that would be needed to carry forward the project of Zacapine modernization and development. Through this position, Seti's long term influences on architecture and public planning in Zacapican would be long lasting. He is credited with almost singlehandedly introducing and propagating the neoclassical style in which he was trained at the Castellum College, with his students and successors within the Public Works Secretariat later creating the Zacapine Latinesque style combining components of classical Zacapine architecture and the Latin neoclassical school.