Dean's Lecture Series: Ensamble Studio
Please join us for the next Dean's Lecture with Architects Débora Mesa and Antón García-Abril focussing on Ensamble Studio's Research.
Ensamble Studio is a cross-functional team founded in 2000 and led by architects Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa. Balancing imagination and reality, art and science, their work innovates typologies, technologies and methodologies to address issues as diverse as the construction of the landscape or 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.
Antón and Débora are committed to sharing ideas and cultivating synergies between professional and academic worlds through teaching, lecturing and researching: she is Critic At Large at Pratt Institute in NYC and he is a Professor at MIT, where they co-founded the POPlab – Prototypes of Prefabrication Laboratory – in 2012.
Special Lecture Theatre Screening
We will be hosting a live-stream screening of the lecture with complimentary breakfast in the B117 Lecture Theatre, Glyn Davis Building, University of Melbourne. If you would like to attend this on-campus session, please select ‘in-person’ on your ticket type when registering.
About the speakers
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 full-professor at the School of Architecture and Planning of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 2012, where he co-founded the POPlab that same year. He received the Spanish Academy Research Prize in Rome in 1996 holds a doctorate degree from the Polytechnic University of Madrid.
Débora Mesa is a European Licensed Architect, principal of Ensamble Studio and co-founder of WoHo. She learned the profession by combining design with hands-on experiences in quarries, factories and construction sites, where she arrived to translate innovative ideas into built reality, alongside her partners Antón García-Abril and Javier Cuesta. Mesa has been key to the expansion of the firm in the United States and the implementation of an interdisciplinary approach to architecture. She is the Ventulett Chair in Architectural Design at Georgia Tech School of Architecture and from 2013 - 2018 served as a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she co-founded the POPlab in 2012. Mesa holds a master’s degree from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, where she also completed her doctorate studies.
Time Zone
This lecture will be held on Tuesday 17 May at 9:00am Australian Eastern Standard Time. To check the date and time of this lecture against your time zone, click this link and enter your city.