Estudio ALA
Estudio ALA is an interdisciplinary architecture practice founded in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2012 by partners Armida Fernández and Luis Enrique Flores. Through architecture, landscape, and research, the practice investigates how productive territories, cultural memory, and ecological systems can redefine contemporary architecture. Rather than treating buildings as isolated objects, the studio develops projects that reinterpret inherited typologies, transforming them into open frameworks that connect people, place, and production.
Luis Enrique Flores graduated from the University of Guadalajara (UDG) and received a Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA I AP) from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Armida Fernández trained as an industrial designer before moving into the field of architecture. She graduated from Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM) with a degree in Industrial Design and later earned a Master of Design Studies in Risk and Resilience (MDes R&R) from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
The partners have served as adjunct professors in the Department of Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, USA. Fernández currently teaches at Tecnológico de Monterrey, while Flores teaches at the University of Guadalajara. Together they have lectured, taught, and served as invited critics at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), California College of the Arts (CCA), University of Colorado, Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago), Washington University in St. Louis (WashU), Veritas University (Costa Rica), National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (Taiwan), National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan). They have also lectured at the UIA World Congress of Architects 2026 in Barcelona.
The studio approaches every project through an interdisciplinary perspective:
"Through design, our mission is to connect time, history, place, and people; to ask the right questions, dissolve established boundaries and conventional hierarchies, and create new forms of collective life." Estudio ALA's work spans cultural, residential, hospitality, and productive landscapes across Mexico, the United States, and Costa Rica. The practice has developed projects in Pharr, Texas; Malibu, San Diego California; Querétaro; Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca; Punta Mita, Nayarit; Jiquilpan, Michoacán; Autlán de Navarro and Arandas, Jalisco; Guadalajara; El Pescadero, Baja California Sur; and Playa Hermosa, Costa Rica.
The practice has received international recognition through the RIBA International Awards for Excellence 2026 Shortlist, the Architectural League of New York Emerging Voices 2024, the XIII Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo (BIAU) 2024, and The Architect's Newspaper 40 Under 40. Their work has been shortlisted for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP Emerging) in 2016 and 2022, selected for the Mexico Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, featured in Metropolis Magazine, and recognized with two Silver Medals at the 2022 Jalisco Architecture Biennale and the Young Architect of the Year Award at the XVII Jalisco Architecture Awards (2023). Fernández and Flores have also served as jurors for the AIA Seattle Honor Awards.
Through built work, research, teaching, and critical engagement, Estudio ALA continues to explore architecture as a catalyst for cultural, ecological, and social transformation, creating projects that reveal the intelligence embedded in productive landscapes and the communities that shape them.
