Alejandro Aravena

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Alejandro Aravena (2015)

Alejandro Gaston Aravena Mori (born June 22, 1967 in Santiago de Chile ) is a Chilean architect and recipient of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture.

Life

The "Siamese Towers" on the PUC's San Joaquin campus

Alejandro Aravena studied architecture at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Universidad Católica de Chile PUC). He has been working in his own office since 1994, and in 2001 he took over the management of Elemental , a planning and architecture office for infrastructure, transport, urban planning and residential construction.

He was visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2000 and 2005) and is Elemental-Copec Professor at the PUC. In 2015 he took over the management of the architecture department of the Biennale di Venezia for 2016.

His work has been exhibited at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2004), the São Paulo Biennale (2007), the Milan Triennale (2008), the Venice Architecture Biennale (2008) and MoMA , New York (2010).

From 2009 to 2015 he was a member of the jury for the Pritzker Prize , which he himself was awarded on April 4, 2016 at the UN headquarters in New York.

honors and awards

Appreciation and criticism

Aravena's appointment as head of the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016 was generally welcomed as a turnaround , away from the representational architecture based on individual large buildings towards an everyday architecture that is dedicated to solving specific problems of the residents. The motto of the biennial he directs is to be understood in this sense. In particular, Aravena's concept of the “half house”, which he implemented in the Quinta Monroy estate in Iquique , Chile, represents a paradigmatic for a seemingly new approach to social housing that includes future residents.

The downside of Aravenas project, the transformation of state tasks of social housing into gestures of generous care of the oil industry - in this case AntarChile, which is also co-owner of the do-tank company Aravenas - for its own employees, monde diplomatique got to the point brought.

In the French architecture magazine DÁ Alejandro Aravena, Olivier criticizes Namias even more comprehensively as a social figurehead of neoliberal political concepts. In addition, Namias complains that Aravena presented its project in Iquique as a new concept without mentioning or citing its predecessor. The German pavilion of the Architecture Biennale in Venice showed side by side panels of the “Half House” in Quinta Monroy in 2004 and of Ernst May's “Self-Help House” in Frankfurt am Main in 1925.

Works (selection)

  • Mathematics building, Universidad Católica de Chile , Santiago de Chile (1999)
  • Housing development Quinta Monroy , Iquique , Chile (2004)
  • Torres Siamesas , Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile (2005)
  • Housing estate and community center in Temuco , Chile (2008)
  • Reconstruction project and public buildings for the city of Constitución after its destruction by a tsunami , Chile (since 2010)
  • Housing estate in Monterrey , Mexico (2010)
  • Lo Barnechea II Housing Estate and Community Center , Lo Barnechea, Santiago, Chile (2012)
  • Aurelia Rojas Burgos School, La Pintana, Santiago, Chile (2013)
  • UC Innovation Center , San Joaquín Campus, Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile (2013)
  • Parque Periurbano, Calama , Chile (under construction)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulf Meyer: Pritzker Prize: An architect for the great Latin American metropolises , NZZ from January 14, 2016.
  2. ↑ Global Award for Sustainable Architecture. Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine, accessed on June 4, 2020 (English).
  3. ↑ Award Winners: 2017 - Alejandro Aravena. gothenburgaward.com, accessed April 25, 2017.
  4. ↑ Robin des boîtes . In: Le Monde diplomatique . March 2016. Paris, p. 28 .
  5. ↑ Namias, Olivier: Qui est vraiment Alejandro Aravena, lauréat 2016 du Pritzker Prize? In: DÁ; January 2016. Retrieved June 3, 2016 .
  6. ↑ P. Körner, P. Sturm: New building in Frankfurt am Main and Iquique . In: P. Cachoala Schmal et al. (Ed.): Making Heimat. Germany, Arrival Country, German Pavilion at the 15th international architecture exhibition 2016 - La Biennale di Venezia . 2016, p. 161-171 .
  7. ↑ see projects on the Elemental website (English / Spanish, accessed on January 15, 2015).
  8. ↑ On the idea of two touching folded glass envelopes around building cores cf. also the WTC competition design by Foster + Partners

Web links

Commons : Alejandro Aravena  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Aravena, Alejandro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aravena Mori, Alejandro Gaston
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chilean architect
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH Santiago de Chile , Chile