José Castillo is the principal of the award-winning Mexico City–based firm a|911. Cofounded by Saidee Saidell in 2002, a|911 was recently named the most visionary architecture office in Mexico by Obras magazine. Its projects include the Spanish Cultural Center (2011), Ara Iztacalco housing project (2011) García Terres Library (2012), and Elena Garro Cultural Center (2013), all in Mexico City. Castillo holds architecture degrees from the Universidad Iberoamericana and Harvard GSD, and has taught and guestlectured at numerous universities. He has served as a juror on several competitions, including recently Bloomberg’s Philanthropies Mayor Challenge Latin America. He has curated exhibitions in New York, Sao Paulo, Rotterdam, Venice and Brussels, and is member of the editorial board of Arquine, the Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society, and LSE Cities and Urban Age. Castillo’s proposal for the Richard Rogers Fellowship extends the research he initiated as a fellow of the Mexican National Endowment for the Arts. Recognizing cooking and eating as cultural, ecological and political actions with territorial and architectural implications, Castillo will investigate the way in which food and cooking transforms cities, drawing connections between urban food economies and pressing global problems such as climate change, inequality, and migration.
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