Antón García-Abril
Antón García-Abril, (Madrid, 1969) is a European PhD Architect, full-professor at the School of Architecture and Planning of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), and he is currently developing a second doctoral thesis about “Stressed Mass” at the School of Civil Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Barcelona. He received the Spanish Academy Research Prize in Rome in 1996. He has been associate professor at the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (E.T.S.A.M.-U.P.M.) for a decade, invited professor at the Graduate School of Design of Harvard University in 2010 and Cornell University in 2008, and visiting critic and lecturer in different universities and institutions in America and Europe, being the most recent ones the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf, AA London, Instituto Cervantes Chicago, Bienne Forum de l’Architecture, University of Texas at San Antonio, Bauhaus University Weimar, the ETH Zürich, Princeton University, Harbin Institute of Technology China, ZA 2010 Congress, Johannesburgo, Sudafric, Accademia d’Architettura of Mendrisio, or the College of Architects of Ecuador in Quito. In 2000 he establishes ENSAMBLE STUDIO leading, together with his partner Débora Mesa, a cross-functional team with a solid research background on the lookout for new approaches to architectonical space, building technologies and urban strategies. Their built projects are exposed structures that explore the essence of materials to create space. The Music Studies Center and the SGAE Central Office in Santiago de Compostela, the Martemar House in Malaga, the Hemeroscopium House in Madrid, The Truffle in Costa da Morte (Spain) and more recently the Reader’s House in Madrid and the Cervantes Theater in Mexico City have been internationally published. Their office has been awarded with important prizes like The Rice Design Alliance Prize to emerging architects in 2009 or the Architectural Record Design Vanguard Prize in 2005, and was selected by SANAA to participate in the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2010. This year Antón has been elected an International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) for his services to international architecture, and has been curator of the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale presenting “Spainlab”. Beside his professional career, he keeps a strong involvement with the academic community through teaching and research. He co-founded with Débora Mesa the Positive City Foundation in 2009, with the aim of forwarding their views on urban development, and they are in the process of setting up a research laboratory at MIT, the POPLab (Prototypes of Prefabrication Laboratory).
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