Alejandro Aravena (born 1967) is a Chilean architect and executive director of ELEMENTAL, a practice known for social housing that residents finish and extend themselves. He graduated from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in 1992, studied in Venice, and founded his own office in 1994. He taught at Harvard from 2000 to 2005 and became ELEMENTAL's executive director in 2006. In 2016 he received the Pritzker Prize and directed the Venice Architecture Biennale, "Reporting from the Front".
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Quinta Monroy in Iquique (2004) built 93 homes for families who had occupied the site since the 1960s, giving each a "half a house" with a kitchen and bathroom and leaving the other half for them to build. ELEMENTAL took the same approach in Monterrey Housing (2010) in Mexico and in Villa Verde Housing (2013) in Constitución. At the Catholic University in Santiago he designed the leaning Siamese Towers (2005), and he also designed the Anacleto Angelini Innovation Center (2014). Alejandro Aravena's projects are studied for what architecture can do with a fixed and tight budget.
