Designers Alejandro Aravena

Alejandro Aravena earned his degree in architecture in 1992 from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He later moved to Venice to attend a course at the Università Iuav di Venezia and take engraving classes at the Academy of Fine Arts. Since 1994, he has worked as an independent architect.

He was a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile from 1994 and at Harvard University from 2000 to 2005, and he currently teaches at the Elemental-Copec Chair at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. From 2009 to 2015, he was a member of the jury for the Pritzker Prize, which he won in 2016, becoming the first Chilean to receive it. In 2009, he was named an International Fellow by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

In 2001, he co-founded the architecture firm Elemental with Andrés Iacobelli and has served as its executive director since 2006. In collaboration with Gonzalo Arteaga, Diego Torres, Víctor Oddó, and Juan Ignacio Cerda, the firm led by Aravena develops social projects including infrastructure, transportation, public spaces, and housing, in partnership with the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and the Copec Petroleum Company.

In 2016, he assumed artistic direction of the Venice Architecture Biennale, inviting participants such as Raphael Zuber, Herzog & de Meuron, Tadao Ando, Peter Zumthor, David Chipperfield, SANAA, Renato Rizzi, and Francis Kéré.

His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Silver Lion at the 11th Venice Biennale, the 2010 Marcus Prize, the Avonni Award for Innovation of the Year, the 2006 Erich Schelling Medal, the 2016 Pritzker Prize, and others.