The essential Alejandro Aravena at DI2010

18 Dec 2009

You will be forgiven for associating Alejandro Aravena's architectural designs with the primitive. Inspired by his homeland, Chile, a country that offers very few resources, Aravena has stripped his design to the most relevant and irreducible foundations, creating his trademark architecture of economic sustainability and pragmatism.

The essential Alejandro Aravena at DI2010

“I really appreciate having been trained in an environment of scarcity. Somehow, it's a very efficient filter against what's not strictly necessary. There's not enough money, not enough time, to answer with tools that are not exactly the ones you need for that question,” explains Aravena.

Aravena is the principal of Alejandro Aravena Architects and the executive director of Elemental, a do-tank focusing on projects of social impact. He was named one of the 20 essential young architects by Icon magazine and has won the Silver Lion for “most promising architect” at the Venice Biennale. Having held visiting professorship at Harvard, he now sits on the jury for the internationally acclaimed Pritzker Architecture Prize and he is one of 10 recipients of RIBA's 2010 International Fellowships.

Explore the bare essentials with Alejandro Aravena at the Design Indaba Conference from 24 to 26 February 2010.

For more information, go to www.designindaba.co.za/.