Alejandro Alavena

• Name — Alejandro Aravena • Birth Name — Alejandro Gastón Aravena Mori • Born — 22 June 1967 • Birthplace — Santiago, Chile • Education — Pontifical Catholic University of Chile • Awards — Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2008), Pritzker Architecture Prize (2016), Urban Land Institute J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development (2019) • Practice — Elemental S.A.

Aravena graduated from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in 1992, He continued his studies of Theory and Art History in Università Iuav di Venezia in Venice, Italy (1992–1993) and established Alejandro Aravena Architects in 1994. Aravena was a visiting professor at Harvard Graduate School of Design from 2000 to 2005, and is the Elemental-Copec Professor at Universidad Católica de Chile. Aravena co-authored Los Hechos de la Arquitectura (ARQ, 1999), El Lugar de la Arquitectura (ARQ, 2002) and the monograph Elemental: Incremental Housing and Participatory Design Manual (Hatje-Cantz, 2012). He was a member of the Pritzker Prize Jury from 2009 to 2015, and is an International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 2006, he became the executive director of ELEMENTAL, a for profit company with social interest. In July 2015, Aravena was named Director of the Architecture Section of the Venice Biennale, with the responsibility for curating the 15th International Architecture Exhibition held in Venice in 2016, with the theme "REPORTING FROM THE FRONT." In his curation of the 15th Venice Biennale of Architecture, Aravena foregrounded social housing, incremental housing, rural-urban relationships, the balance between technology and natural materials, and an attentiveness to manual labor and handicraft. Aravena invited Raphael Zuber, Herzog & de Meuron, Tadao Ando, Peter Zumthor, David Chipperfield, SANAA and Francis Kéré, among others. In 2025, Aravena was a member of the advisory panel that chose Lina Ghotmeh as architect of the Qatari Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

• Illustration — Siamese Towers (2005) at the Catholic University of Chile. • Illustration — Anacleto Angelini Innovation Center. Aravena designed the inclined building "Siamese Towers," a workshop building at the school of architecture and faculty buildings at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He designed the Colegio Huelquén Montessori; the Casa para una Escultora (House for a Sculptor); the Casa en el lago Pirehueico (House on Pirihueico Lake); Hunt, Le Mans and Johnson residential halls of St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas; art workshops on the Vitra campus at Weil am Rhein; Villa in Ordos (Inner Mongolia) and projects for the Elemental initiative. He also designed a children's playground at the Metropolitan Park of Santiago.