ALAO was co-founded by Aya Maceda, a Filipino-Australian architect and professor at Parsons School of Design. She is a registered architect in Connecticut and Australia and brings with her extensive professional experience from prestigious practices in New York, Sydney, Singapore and the Philippines specializing in the design of complex, award-winning residential and institutional projects that enhance the public domain, from highly-detailed single dwellings to dense residential projects, public libraries and university buildings. 

Aya holds a M.S. Advanced Architectural Design graduate and former faculty of Columbia University GSAPP. She has served as a guest critic at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Columbia GSAPP, Parsons SCE and University of Technology, Sydney.  Aya is a recipient of the Percival and Naomi Goodman Fellowship for social work in architecture from Columbia GSAPP; the Lucille Smyser Lowenfish Memorial Prize for design excellence from Columbia GSAPP and the Westfield Fellowship for Technology from the American Australian Association. Aya has published both her writing and built work in Australia and the US.