Alejandro Aravena is a chilean architect, recently awarded with the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale (Promising Young Architect) and selected as a one of the 20 most promising young architects by Icon Magazine, magazine which also features him on the cover of the january issue.

Alejandro has a very strong line of buildings, on which finding solutions is the key: the Siamese Towers (Chile),  Pirihueico House (Chile), the Mathematics School at UC (Chile) and ongoing projects such as ORDOS 100 (Inner Mongolia, China), the new facilities of St. Edward’s University in (Austin, TX, USA) and a new building for the Vitra Campus (Germany).

But what has made him achieve all this awards is something else. He is the Executive Director of Elemental Chile, a do-tank that “contributes to improve the quality of life in Chilean cities, providing state of the art architecture and engineering, understanding the city as an unlimited resource to build social equity”. This do-tank has made a huge impact in public policies, improving the quality of social housing not only in several cities in Chile, but also in Mexico.

We had the chance to interview him at his office in Elemental, on a very interesting conversation sharing his thoughts on architecture, the city, public policy and more.