Alejandro Aravena Pritzker Prize winner 2016

Alejandro Aravena has being announced the Pritzker Prize winner for 2016, but, who is Aravena? He was born on June 22, 1967, in Santiago, Chile, graduating as an architect from the Universidad Católica de Chile in 1992 and establishing his own practice two years later. However since the year 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.

Also he has endeavoured in the academic world been a Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2000 and 2005, also teaching at Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia in 2005 at the Association in London in 1999, and London School of Economics. Having Witten Los Hechos de la Arquitectura (Architectural Facts, 1999), El Lugar de la Arquitectura (The Place in/of Architecture, 2002) and Material de Arquitectura (Architecture Matters, 2003).

Alejandro Aravena belongs to a whole new generation of architects with a holistic approach regarding the built, and having proved his ability to connect social responsibility, economic demands, as well as the design, very few had achieved the ability to be artful and yet meet the social and economic challenges of the society of today, and in doing so has meaningfully expanded the role of the architect.

Now days architects are beginning to come to terms with is the existence of cultural differences, and social needs, ELEMENTAL is an exemplary case of it because they have built thousands of housing units throughout Chile, they have also developed an innovative approach to low-income housing that is now being employed in other Latin American countries and around the world.

Quinta Monroy

ELEMENTAL deals with the intention of understanding the specificities of each particular location so they architects can respond successfully to the challenges inherent in the provision of social housing. These conditions are geographical but also social, political, economic and technological, thus making every projects and its approach unique and diferent.

One of the first social housing schemes built by ELEMENTAL was the Quinta Monroy housing done in the year 2003 in the city of Iquique, which is a small coastal city at thousand and a four hundred kilometres away from the capital Santiago, consisting in the development of 93 housing units in a deprived area south of the city center. This project permits residents to extend their houses in the future at very low cost.

Lo Espejo in Santiago, the capital of Chile, is another example of this type of architecture, design in 2005, 30 houses in one of the poorest and most densely populated areas of the city and 12 kilometres away from the centre for families that lived in an illegal settlement

However Aravena has ventured too in other types of buildings such as the Centro Tecnológico San Joaquín, commissioned by the renowned Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, a building to contain computer equipment and labs for the campus, an unusual building, intended to house 500 students, classrooms, laboratories, offices, and various rooms for computers, technical support, and machinery.

Centro Tecnológico San Joaquín

This construction questions whether the traditional models of classrooms are relevant today, arguing that instead of light, darkness is needed for the computer monitors, recognizing that learning needs have changed due to computer screens and monitors. This is what makes Aravena an interesting architect, questioning the models and searching for new ways to do things. Somehow Alejandro Aravena is persuing a dual path, between high-profile projects and low-income housing