The architecture studio LANZA was founded in 2015 by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo and is based in Mexico City.
The leitmotiv of their practice is to find and contribute to the beauty of the world.
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For LANZA Arienzo Abascal, architecture is a means through which one can contribute to reality and position oneself in the world. LANZA’s first solo show, New Work, took place at SFMOMA in 2018. The office’s work has also been exhibited at the Latin American Architecture Biennial 2023, the 12th São Paulo Arch.Biennial, the Lisbon Triennial 2019 and Concéntrico Festival in Spain 2021. The studio has presented their work at CU Denver 2024, UTSA 2023, Cal Poly Pomona as part of the VDL House Residency Program 2022, Kent CAED 2022, Constructing Practice Symposium at Columbia University 2019, among others. LANZA has been nominated for the 2016 Ibero American Architecture Biennial Award and the Mies Crown Hall Award for Emerging Architects, MIT Chicago, 2016 and 2022, and for the Brick Award 2021. The office is one of the winners of the Young Architects Prize 2017 and the Emerging Voices Award 2023 from the Architectural League of New York which described their multimodal work as one that “expresses an inventiveness, a sensitivity to context, and a compositional refinement that spans scales and forms.” The studio is today working on industrial design, residential projects, cultural spaces and public infrastructure projects.
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Isabel Martínez Abascal graduated as an architect from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. She studied at the Technische Universität in Berlin and at the Vastu Shilpa Foundation in Ahmedabad (India). She collaborated with the studios SANAA (Tokyo), Aranguren and Gallegos (Madrid), Anupama Kundoo (Berlin) and Pedro Mendes da Rocha (Sao Paulo).
She has been design studio professor for six years in the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Escola da Cidade, in Sao Paulo. She has participated as faculty at the 24th International Workshop of Cartagena, at the Ibero-American Biennial in Medellin 2010, at the International Seminar of Curitiba 2012 and at the Rio Olympics Workshop of the California College of the Arts 2012. She participated in the curating of the 10th Biennial Of Architecture of São Paulo, 2013 and curated the exhibition “13” for the inaugural cycle of the La Conservera Museum, Murcia 2014 and the exhibition “Visionary Instruments” by the artist Almudena Lobera for the ECCO Museum, Cadiz 2015.
Since July 2015 until August 2017, she was executive director of the LIGA, Space for Architecture platform in Mexico City, dedicated to the exhibition, dissemination and discussion of Latin American architecture.
Alessandro Arienzo is an architect who graduated with honors from the Universidad Iberoamericana. In 2012 he designed Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura’s inaugural exhibition “Happiness is a hot (and cold) sponge,” with Rodrigo Escandón. He collaborated with Taller de Arquitectura Rocha + Carrillo, Taller Tornel and Frida Escobedo, with whom he developed the conceptual project for the Mexico Pavilion at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London Design Festival 2015, the renovation of the Fondo de Cultura Octavio Paz bookshop 2013 and the Public Stage Pavilion for the Lisbon Triennial, 2013. Eager to explore the different possibilities of architecture, he develops research and publishing projects.
He was a recipient of the FONCA Young Creators Grant Program during 2017.
Collaborators
Present: Alejandra Richard, Arón Valencia
Past: Henry Peters, Fernanda Gómez, Diego Gahu, Milena Fischer, Francesca Motte, Sofia Valdovinos, Beatriz Sallowiczs, Lucía Font, Tatiana Valente, Manuela Leboreiro, Maïlys Sourgen, Lili Carr, Isabel Palacios, Jessica Hernández, Celina Bonadeo, Alejandro Márquez.