Alejandro Guerrero | Andrea Soto | ATELIER ARS

Our proposals are the result of a deep reflection regarding three main ideas that have become fundamental in our practice:
The relationship of architecture with nature through landscape; the intrinsic condition of architecture understood as a discipline, through the role of history in the contemporary practice; and the relationship of architecture with the human through rituals and myths.

The dialectic between architecture and landscape has been a key subject in our work, as we have been interested for a long time in the possibility of blurring those disciplinary limits, to find new ways of expression for our practice. Instead of understanding architecture and landscape as two different professional activities, we have tried to research the possibilities of crossing information that can lead to a better understanding of the creation of human habitats.

Alejandro Guerrero and Andrea Soto are architects both graduated from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO) in Guadalajara, México. They have been working together since 2010. Alejandro Guerrero obtained a Master’s Degree in Architecture, Criticism and Project from the School of Architecture of Barcelona at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in 2006, and taught architectural design studio for more than 14 years at ITESO. Andrea Soto won the CEMEX Architect Marcelo Zambrano Scholarship which supported her studies for the Master in Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, graduating with an American Society of Landscape Architects ASLA distinction in 2017.

Together, they have received the Emerging Voices award, given by The Architectural League of New York and the Design Vanguard from the Architectural Record magazine, both awards in the year 2015. Their work has been nominated for the Mies Crown Hall America’s Prize, granted by the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and has been a finalist in the Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism Biennial in Sao Paulo, Brazil. They have been lecturers at the Graduate School of Design of Harvard through the Latin GSD cycle, Boston Architectural College BAC, as well as UBC SALA, and UVA University. Some of their work became part of the Official Exhibition of Mexico’s Pavilion at the Architecture Venice Biennial in 2014, 2016 and 2018. They obtained a Silver Medal in the XV Mexican Architecture Biennial and they were finalists in the Emerging Architects prize from the Architectural Review magazine in 2018. Their work has been recognized and 1st prize at the III Latin American Biennial of Landscape Architecture. In 2019 as part of the event Mantovarchitettura 2019, they participated as lecturers and their work was presented in the international exhibition “Diseñando México” of the Milan Polytechnic, Polo Territorial di Mantova, in collaboration with CASABELLA.

They have developed over many years, academic activities that promote the exchange of architectural culture through courses and seminars on topics of theory and history with Universities and NGOs such as ForA and CCAU, as well as participation at Harvard GSD and UVA Virginia as guest critics. As a result of such academic work, the book Arquitecturas del Fuego I y II was written by Alejandro Guerrero in 2020, a theoretical framework that accounts for the interest of our office regarding history, architecture and landscape issues.

COLLABORATORS.

Currently:

Roberto González
Diego Pesqueira
Mariana López
Regina Carlos

Ana Victoria Abarca
Juan Carlos Arauz
Benjamín Perez
Oliver Román
Angie Pomposo
Diego Flores
Daniel Uribe
Erick Fernández
Gabriel Márquez
Francisco Pacheco
Andrea Álvarez
Juan Carlos Albo
Alexis Doroteo Díaz
Alexis Castillo
Benjamín Rubio
Emilia Avendaño
Melisa Rodríguez
Luis Macedo
Diego Orduño
Isabel Castiello
Inés Plasencia
Diego Monraz
Alejandra González
Ivana Montijo