Archinect - News

Alejandro Aravena to deliver the new home of the School of Architecture, Art and Design in Monterrey, Mexico

2023-09-21T12:30:00-04:00

Pritzker laureate Alejandro Aravena and his firm ELEMENTAL S.A have been announced as the project leads to deliver the new home of the School of Architecture, Art and Design (EAAD) to the Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM) in Mexico.

The scope of the new Classrooms 10 project entails a new building at the Avenida Junco de la Vega that will house the school’s Architecture, Design, Digital Art, and Urbanism programs, all of which are currently spread throughout multiple facilities at its Monterrey flagship campus. The university also operates 21 satellite campuses across Mexico, though no plans appear to be in development for any of their locations.

Aravena visited the campus in late August to workshop the idea with students and faculty at the university. Dean Rodolfo Barragán says the project will leave “a place with urban significance” that integrates ITESM’s presence with Monterrey’s Central Park while “highlighting and giving meaning to the activities that will be appropri...

Alejandro Aravena previews ELEMENTAL's massive Qatar Art Mill project in Doha

2022-12-27T18:00:00-05:00

“The aim is for the building to last, and to do that it needs to be suited to the context,” he says. “But we also want the visitor to feel reflected and interpreted by this building. I want to capture this society’s sensibility and sense of pride. This will be a calm building.”

The Art Mill Museum project represents 21-year-old ELEMENTAL’s first-ever museum commission and will be joined by designs from Herzog & de Meuron and OMA upon its completion towards the end of the decade. Aravena said he wants to “create something reversible,” looking to the existing silo structures as “clues for how to proceed” that can ultimately be altered by subsequent generations of designers, adding, “What works today for a museum might not work in the future.”

“We came in with no bias about museum architecture, and no real knowledge of the region,” he added (although he mentioned his experience designing with seismic and climatic considerations in his native country as informing the nearly one-million-square-foot design.)

Revisit Archinect's 2019 interview: The War on Cliché; A Conversation with Alejandro Aravena

“Much as we continue to pursue projects around housing and community and slum upgrading, we also like to tackle these big projects, to keep our design tools sharpen...

Qatar will receive three new museums from a trio of Pritzker Prize winners

2022-03-28T19:24:00-04:00

Three new major museum projects were announced yesterday at the 2022 Doha Forum in Qatar.

Qatar Museums Chairperson Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani was on hand to premiere the new initiative, which is meant to kick off the next phase in the country’s development goals propelled by a continued investment in the cultural economy.

Al Mayassa was joined by two-thirds of the architects for the museums: Jacques Herzog of Herzog & de Meuron, who will design the Lusail Museum, and ELEMENTAL director Alejandro Aravena, whose firm will be responsible for the Art Mill. OMA’s Rem Koolhaas, who will design the new Qatar Auto Museum, was the lone holdout.

The Art Mill represents the 21-year-old ELEMENTAL’s first foray into the museum typology. Envisioned as a fusion of performances spaces, contemporary art galleries, and dedicated areas for artist residency programs, what was formerly the site of a historic flour mill will now be transformed into an anchor for various Qatari c...

The War on Cliché; A Conversation with Alejandro Aravena

2019-09-20T18:46:00-04:00

On this episode, we're joined by Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena. A long-familiar name to most of our listeners, Aravena’s work gained significant media attention upon winning the Pritzker Prize in 2016, elevating his reputation for working to address some of today’s most difficult issues through participatory design, engaging users, groups, experts, and the public-at-large. His most notable projects are his “incremental housing” developments, a partially subsidized low-income solution for displaced families providing half-built homes for families to complete on their own, within their own budgets and tastes. Elemental has since released the plans for these projects for free, via download from their website.

Quinta Monroy, by Elemental

Villa Verde, one of the four projects whose plans have been released to the public by Elemental. From Archinect's article "Inside Aravena's open source plans for low-cost yet upgradable housing"

This week Aravena was awarded another significant priz...

ELEMENTAL strikes a balance between luxury and altruism

2019-05-01T19:54:00-04:00

There is only a small handful of architects practicing today whose work can at once be described as lavish and another as altruistic - Michael Maltzan, Shigeru Ban and Kengo Kuma are a few of the names that come to mind.

Vacation Home, by ELEMENTAL. Image via Chile Sotheby’s International Realty

But perhaps it is the name of Alejandro Aravena, the Pritzker-prize winning architect behind the Chilean firm ELEMENTAL, that should come before others. The firm's work is always photogenic (the vacation home featured above being among their most exemplary), but one gets the strong sense that this isn't the main priority each time they take on a new project. Rather, as Aravena said in an interview, the firm's goal is to contribute to "a fair built environment where the common good can be guaranteed and balanced with individual gains."

ELEMENTAL, Alejandro Aravena. Published by Lars Müller.

ELEMENTAL, the monograph recently published by Lars Müller, highlights the delicate balance between lux...

Alejandro Arevena's alluring concrete vacation home

2018-10-12T20:28:00-04:00

The radical, four-bedroom vacation house is part of the Ochoalcubo project – a pioneering ‘architectural laboratory’ led by the entrepreneur and architecture lover Eduardo Godoy. Leading Chilean and Japanese practices including Aravena, Smiljan Radic, Toyo Ito and Sou Fujimoto were asked to design a series of ground-breaking homes on the coast of Ochoquebradas.

Pritzker Prize-winner Alejandro Aravena uses the Chilean landscape of Coquimbo to create a weekend home oozing with dramatic appeal and a moody ancient beauty. The vacation home is comprised of three large concrete volumes specifically stacked one against the other. Sitting on a hilltop overlooking the Chilean coast, the home, at first glance exudes an "ancient" looking quality.

Image via Chile Sotheby’s International Realty

The massively rugged, boulder like structure was heavily influenced by primitivistic values. Its simplistic exterior is carried through out the entire house. The interiority of the space reflects modernist principles that focus on a flow of indoor/outdoor space and a loyalty to basic materials.

Image via Chile Sotheby’s International Realty

At the center of the home is a large fire pit that accents the room without frills. The exposed concrete surfaces found through out the structure complement the floor-to-ceiling glass walls that can be found in each of the fo...

Alejandro Aravena's ELEMENTAL to design the 1 million sq.ft. Qatar Art Mill

2017-05-15T15:58:00-04:00

Alejandro Aravena's Santiago firm ELEMENTAL had the winning concept for the Qatar Art Mill Design Competition. Launched by Qatar Museums in 2015, the three-stage competition sought the architect who will convert an approximately 1 million square-foot flour mill into a new waterfront art museum for Doha Bay...“The [winning] concept design was praised by the international jury as ‘a serene artwork...”

Elemental Art Mill Concept Design. Image © Qatar Museums and Malcolm Reading Consultants.

Chosen from eight top-notch finalists, Elemental was inspired by the iconic “rhythmic monumental grain silos” of the original Flour Mills that formerly occupied the site.

Find out more on Bustler.

Aravena wins the 2017 Gothenburg Award for Sustainable Design

2017-04-26T12:23:00-04:00

From winning the Pritzker to curating the Venice Biennale, the Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena had a pretty good 2016. Apparently, he’s still on a roll: Aravena has just been awarded the 2017 Gothenburg Award for Sustainable Design. Awarded each year to people or organizations for “outstanding performance and achievements towards a sustainable future”, the award comes with 1 million swedish krona (just over $100,000).

“Mr Alejandro Aravena is an innovative Chilean architect that together with his colleagues in the ‘Do-Tank’ Elemental applies a design philosophy including citizens as part of the solution and not part of the problem, creating bridges of trust between people, government and business,” write the jury. “All three dimensions of sustainability are balanced in a participatory process; socially, environmentally and economically.”

Decoding Alejandro Aravena's Pritzker

2016-04-11T13:17:00-04:00

The suspicion is that the Pritzker judges haven’t changed all that much, and are backing an iconic-humanitarian architect, a flipside to the starchitects they previously promoted rather than a radical alternative [...] Some scepticism is in order, as to whether the Pritzker committee have suddenly become experts in the vastly complicated business of humanitarian architecture and whether there might be a large dose of gesture and symbolism in their actions.

Related on Archinect.:

Inside Aravena's open source plans for low-cost yet upgradable housing

2016-04-06T14:35:00-04:00

After Alejandro Aravena accepted the Pritzker Prize yesterday, his firm Elemental released four open source plans for low income housing that, according to the firm's website, balance the constraints of "low-rise high density, without overcrowding, with possibility of expansion (from social housing to middle-class dwelling)." The plans were released partly as a response to the looming housing crisis of 2030, in which it is estimated that two billion people will be living under the poverty line.

Aravena's self-described "incremental housing" is partly a governmental effort, and partly an individual one. By providing plans for proven models of sustainable housing, people can have greater agency in housing themselves. "Given the magnitude of the housing shortage, we won't solve this problem unless we add people's own resources and building capacity to that of governments and the market," reads Elemental's statement.

The four projects Elemental has released plans for are Quinta Monroy, V...

Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, director of this year's Venice Biennale, named 2016 Pritzker Prize Laureate

2016-01-13T11:39:00-05:00

The Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena has been named Pritzker Prize Laureate for 2016. The 48-year old is known for his socially-minded work at various scales in Chile, produced under two forms of practice – principal of his private firm, Alejandro Aravena Architects, and executive director of the “Do Tank”, ELEMENTAL, both based in Santiago. He is the first Chilean architect to receive the prize, and one of the youngest.

↑ Anacleto Angelini, 2014, San Joaquín Campus, Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago

↑ Siamese Towers, 2005, San Joaquín Campus, Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago

Although Aravena's most recognizable work might be his multiple projects for Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago – the UC Innovation Center includes Anacleto Angelini (2014), the Siamese Towers (2005), Medical School (2004), School of Architecture (2004), and the Mathematics School (1999) – the most significant note mentioned in the jury's citation is his commitment to social housing, mo...

Chilean architecture is coming out of its shell

2015-05-18T13:41:00-04:00

Chilean architects have begun to exert an influence well beyond the size and scale of their string-bean nation. [...] “There are enough people working here in a way that shifts the art,” explains Aravena, sitting in the middle of his firm’s buzzing Santiago offices. “There is healthy competition and there is critical mass. When you have a critical mass, you are not alone in trying to push boundaries.” The result: remarkable buildings all over Chile.