Principals

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. 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”. 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).

Javier Cuesta

Javier Cuesta Rodríguez-Torices, (Madrid, 1973) graduates from the School of Technical Architecture in Madrid in 1997 and starts working with Antón García-Abril the year after joining ENSAMBLE STUDIO in 2000 from the beginning of its foundation. He is an essential part of the team participating actively in the design of the construction of every project the office produces. In 2003 he founds with Antón García-Abril MATERIA INORGÁNICA, an in-house construction company that has the will to build the works that Ensamble Studio designs, controlling thoroughly their execution on site. His experience as Technical Director, Quantity Surveyor, Construction and Development Manager and Health and Safety Coordinator, contributes with a very pragmatic vision to the work of the office. His technical skills and challenging character have made possible the construction of works such as the SGAE Central Office in Santiago de Compostela, the Hemeroscopium House in Madrid, and more recently The Truffle in Costa da Morte (Spain).

Débora Mesa

Débora Mesa Molina, (Madrid, 1981), joins Ensamble Studio in 2003, before graduating from the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (E.T.S.A.M.) in 2006, and becomes Antón García- Abril’s partner in 2010, after building the SGAE Central Office in Santiago de Compostela and the Hemeroscopium House in Madrid and playing a major role in the realization of projects such as the Tower of Music in Valencia and the Reader’s House in Madrid’s old Slaughterhouse, now under construction, among other works. She has finished architecture doctorate studies and is actually developing her thesis based on the principle of equilibrium, tracing a thin line where architecture and engineering meet. She has been an invited professor at different universities in USA and Spain, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in 2011, the E.T.S.A.Madrid in 2009 and 2010, and Cornell University in 2008, teaching architecture design studios, and has assisted Antón García-Abril in the design studio he taught in the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University in 2010. She is one of the founders of the Positive City Foundation, and is engaged in the study of the urban phenomenon, giving responses to the future of cities with a practical vision and an environmental compromise. Débora Mesa together with Antón García-Abril, curated this year, the Spanish Pavilion at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. She is the founder of POPLAB (Prototypes of Prefabrication - Reasearch Lab) a research laboratory at MIT.