2024 Fall Lecture Series: Alejandro Saldarriaga

In 2020 humanity faced an unprecedented period where the fantastic became part of our reality. Due to COVID-19, we were asked to rethink how we behaved in the public realm from one week to another and this moment of uncertainty modified our approach to transient infrastructures in the public realm. As such, one can only speculate; Did this moment of magical realism catalyze new architectures to address chronic problematics in our contemporary world?

Alejandro Saldarriaga Rubio is a Colombian designer known for his work in architecture and ephemeral design. Born and raised in Bogota, Colombia, Alejandro has an international professional trajectory, having lived, and worked in various countries including Denmark, Switzerland, and the United States.

He holds a master’s degree in architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and currently resides in Boston working as a Teacher and Research Fellow at Northeastern University. In 2020, he founded his architecture practice, ALSAR-ATELIER, during the midst of the pandemic. The studio is dedicated to investigating impermanent, low-tec, and need-based architectures derived from pandemic response design.

Since its inception, ALSAR-ATELIER has produced a noteworthy line of projects that have gained significant attention from local and international media. In 2023, ALSAR-ATELIER was included in the latest edition of Archdaily’s Best New Practices and was published in the November 2023 edition of DOMUS magazine.