ARCHITECTURE: Alejandro Aravena

The Chilean Architect Alejandro Aravena (22/6/1967- ) is the winner of the 2016 Pritzker Prize. Highlighting his dedication to improve urban environments and to address the global housing crisis, the Pritzker Prize jury praised the way in which the Chilean architect has “Risen to the demands of practicing architecture as an artful endeavor, as well as meeting today’s social and economic challenges”. Alejandro Aravena is the 41st Pritzker Prize laureate and the first Chilean to receive the award.

By Dimitris Lempesis

Alejandro Aravena was born on 22/6/67, in Santiago, Chile. He graduated as an architect from the Universidad Católica de Chile in 1992. Shortly after graduating, following a succession of “shitty clients … restaurants, bars, shops”, he got so disillusioned that he quit architecture and opened a bar. When he eventually decided to resume his career, he got lucky. A sculptor asked him to design her house “I wanted to have that kind of freedom”. So he said, “Don’t pay me, but allow me to do whatever I want. I think I was rigorous enough, but it was still a completely stupid thing”. In 1994, he established his own practice, Alejandro Aravena Architects. Since 2001 he has been leading ELEMENTAL, a “Do Tank” focusing on projects of public interest and social impact, including housing, public space, infrastructure, and transportation. ELEMENTAL’s contribution to the canon of social housing came from an almost impossible question. In 2003 Aravena was asked to house 100 families in Iquique, a city in northern Chile, with just $7,500 per family in government subsidies to buy the land and build the houses. “We tested every single known typology available on the market”, he says. “None of them solved the question. The families had enough money to buy the city-centre site or build the houses, but not both. That’s why social housing is two hours away in the peripheries”, says Aravena. “That’s the drama of Latin America”. After the 2010 earthquake and tsunami that hit Chile, ELEMENTAL was called to work on the reconstruction of the city of Constitucion, Chile. Torres. Aravena has consistently pursued architecture with a clarity of vision and great skill. Undertaking several buildings for his alma mater, the Universidad Católica de Chile, including the Mathematics School (1998), Medical School (2001), the renovation of the School of Architecture (2004), Siamese Towers (2005) and more recently the UC Innovation Center – Anacleto Angelini (2014). He is the Director of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016. He was a speaker at TEDGlobal in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2014 and a member of the Pritzker Architecture Prize Jury from 2009 to 2015. In 2010 he was named International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He is a Board Member of the Cities Program of the London School of Economics since 2011, Regional Advisory Board Member of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Board Member of the Swiss Holcim Foundation since 2013, Foundational Member of the Chilean Public Policies Society, and Leader of the Helsinki Design Lab for SITRA, the Finnish Government Innovation Fund. He was one of the 100 personalities contributing to the Rio +20 Global Summit in 2012. Aravena won the León de Plata XI Bienal in Venice, the Erich Schelling Architecture Medal in 2006 and was a finalist for the Mies van der Rohe Award (2000) and the Iakhov Chernikhov Prize (2008). He received a Silver Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2008. He was a 2011 Index award winner. Exhibitions of his work have included a showing at São Paulo Biennale in 2007, the Milan Triennale in 2008 and the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2008 and MoMA, New York in 2010. Aravena was a Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2000 and 2005) and also taught at Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (2005), Architectural Association in London (1999), and London School of Economics. He has held the ELEMENTAL Copec Chair at Universidad Católica de Chile since 2006. He is the 41st laureate of the Pritzker Prize, the 1st Pritzker Laureate from Chile, and the 4th from Latin America, after Luis Barragán (1980), Oscar Niemeyer (1988), and Paulo Mendes da Rocha (2006). He is author of “Los Hechos de la Arquitectura” (1999), “El Lugar de la Arquitectura” (2002) and “Material de Arquitectura” (2003).