Saldarriaga Roa, Alberto

Graduated as an architect from the Faculty of Arts at the National University of Colombia in 1965. Specialized in Housing and Planning at the Inter-American Housing Center in Bogotá. After taking Urban Planning courses at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, he worked for architect Paolo Soleri at Cosanti Foundation in 1970. He has been a Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at the National University and the University of the Andes in Bogotá. He worked for several years in architectural design with Dicken Castro, with whom he won the II Quito Architecture Biennial Award in 1980 in the building category with the “Los Eucaliptus” building in Bogotá. In 1976, he published his first individual book titled Habitability with Editorial Escala in Bogotá. Between 1977 and 1986, he published several books jointly with Lorenzo Fonseca Martínez, his partner at the Center for Architecture and Environmental Studies (CEAM). In 1986 and 1988, respectively, he published two other individual books with the National University of Colombia: Architecture and Culture in Colombia and Everyday Architecture, the latter prepared at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, thanks to the “Simón Bolívar” Scholarship awarded by the British Council. This book won the “VI Quito Architecture Biennial” award in 1988 in the History and Criticism category. The book Popular Architecture in Colombia: Heritage and Traditions, prepared jointly with Lorenzo Fonseca, won the “Carlos Martínez” research award at the XIII Colombian Architecture Biennial in 1992 and the VIII Quito Biennial award in the Theory, History, and Criticism category. In 1994, 1998, and 2000, he received honorable mentions at the X, XI, and XII Latin American Architecture Biennials in Quito in the same category with the books End of Century Architecture, Learning Architecture, and the CD-ROM. Bogotá CD. In 2002, he won the first shared prize for Theory, History, and Criticism at the same event with the book Bogotá in the 20th Century: Urbanism, Architecture, and Urban Life. In 2005, he was recognized with the America Award in the Theory category at the XIX Latin American Architecture Seminar held in Mexico.