“Architecture of the Earth”

Wednesday, October 9th, 5:00p.m. est
EMPAC Theater
Kenneth L. Warriner Memorial Lecture

Rensselaer School of Architecture continues its Fall 2024 Lecture Series on Wednesday, October 9th, 5:00 p.m., at EMPAC with the lecture “Architecture of the Earth” by Antón García-Abril.

Antón García-Abril is a European Licensed Architect and a registered architect in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He established Ensamble Studio in 2000 and has co-founded WoHo in 2020. He has dedicated his career to innovating typologies, technologies, and methodologies, advancing the fields of architecture and construction through works that are internationally recognized. Together with his partner Debora Mesa, he has progressively redefined the role of the architect, adding to his design competencies those from the developer, the contractor, the fabricator and the inventor. García-Abril is a professor at the School of Architecture and Planning of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 2012, where he co-founded the POPlab –​Prototypes of Prefabrication Laboratory​– that same year. He received the Spanish Academy Research Prize in Rome in 1996 and holds a doctorate from the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

Ensamble Studio is a cross-functional team founded in 2000 and led by Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa. Balancing imagination and reality, art and science, their works address diverse issues as diverse from the construction of the landscape to the prefabrication of the house. From their early works –SGAE Headquarters, Hemeroscopium House or The Truffle in Spain– to their most recent –Ensamble Fabrica in Madrid and Ca’n Terra in Menorca, Spain–, every project makes space for experimentation aiming to advance their field. Currently, through their startup WoHo, they are invested in increasing the quality of architecture while making it more affordable by integrating offsite technologies. Their new research and fabrication facility in Madrid, Ensamble Fabrica, has been built to support this endeavor.

Their contributions to the theory and practice of architecture have received numerous international recognitions, the latest ones being: the 2022 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the 2021 Marcus Prize, and the 2019 RIBA Charles Jencks Award.

We look forward to seeing you at this lecture.

https://www.ensamble.info/about