Alejandro Haiek Coll

Alejandro Haiek Coll is a Swedish-Venezuelan practicing architect, researcher and educator, working as Associate Professor at Umeå School of Architecture, Umeå University. At UMA, he is the leader of MA Studio 12: Altered Geographies and Research Leader of the Laboratory of Intersectional Ecologies, a research group focused on territorial violence, spatial-ecological justice, bio-regional planning, systemic re-engineering and interspecies design. He is also the founder of Lab.Pro.Fab — Laboratory of Prototypes and Fabrication, an explorative, action-based transscalar practice. The Public Machinery operates as its public interface and cooperative network, activating buildings, performances, eco-installations and civic infrastructures as public choreographies with multiple agents and actors, including communities, institutions, policy actors, NGOs, grassroots organisations, makers, artists, engineers and environmental agents involved in the design, construction, use and afterlife of the work.

His work is situated within transscalar landscape intelligence and infrastructural ecologies, connecting architecture with geography, environmental engineering, molecular biology, informatics, landscape ecology, computational design, environmental art, eco-installations, performative installation, digital media, community and cultural infrastructure, and regenerative public infrastructures. Across these fields, Haiek Coll studies landscapes as active systems of matter, policy, ecology, technology and social relations.

Haiek Coll holds a PhD in Architecture and Design from the University of Genoa, awarded Excellent cum laude with International Mention in 2024. His doctoral thesis, The Landscape is (not) a Machine, develops a transscalar and metatemporal reading of altered landscapes, moving from planetary systems to molecular processes in order to understand post-industrial territories as fields of conflict, memory, intelligence and possible regeneration. He also holds a Master of Science in Architectural Design with Honorific Mention from the Central University of Venezuela. His master thesis, Anatomía Artificial, unpacked the reproduction of nature as a new synthetic reality.

His current research examines how industrial activity, extractive economies, infrastructural dependency and climate instability transform natural and cultural landscapes unevenly. Rather than treating damaged territories only as zones of crisis, his work approaches them as living archives of disturbance, negotiation and repair. Post-extraction landscapes, altered hydrologies, forest clearings, mining residues, industrial corridors, protected boundaries and transborder ecological systems become sites for exploring territorial healing, restoration, rewilding, regenerative reprogramming, sovereignty and autonomy.

Within this framework, Haiek Coll investigates new territorial forms capable of making unseen dimensions of socio-ecological landscapes legible. These forms include bioregional arrangements, responsive, metabolic and learning infrastructures, ecological corridors, declared buffer zones of protection, reparatory grounds and other spatial protocols through which land, water, species, policy and public agency can be renegotiated. This perspective extends the work towards territorial futures that rethink nature and land rights not only as legal categories, but as spatial, ecological and institutional conditions for repair.

Through the Laboratory of Intersectional Ecologies, Haiek Coll develops evidence-based inquiries that combine geospatial mapping, satellite imagery, fieldwork, environmental sensing, 3D scanning, photogrammetry, complex modelling, AI-assisted visualisation, growth algorithms, multidimensional cartographies and immersive media. These methods make hidden territorial phenomena spatially and sensorially legible: slow violence, extractive residues, disrupted ecological cycles, infrastructural control, biodiversity loss, altered river systems, exhausted soils, toxic atmospheres and emerging patterns of socio-ecological regeneration.

The laboratory translates this evidentiary research into active maps, multisensorial environments, collaborative digital cartographies, VR/AR installations and speculative environmental narratives. These formats augment remote, invisible or slow-moving conditions into embodied experiences, allowing students, researchers, communities, public institutions and other territorial agents to engage with environmental complexity. In this sense, the immersive environment is not a representation after the research, but an operative space where data, material evidence, memory, policy and public experience can be assembled, discussed and mobilised.

Haiek Coll’s teaching is organised through a sequence of Transscalar Landscape Studios embedded in the idea of infrastructural landscaping. These studios understand landscape not as background, but as an operative system shaped by climate, extraction, construction, technology, public life and ecological processes. At UMA, this trajectory moves through BA and MA environments such as Social Landscapes, Performative Tectonics, Tectonic Landscapes, Regenerative Eco-Infrastructures and New Cultural Grounds, Man-Made Geographies and Altered Landscapes / Altered Geographies. Together, they form a scalar pedagogy that connects territorial research, live projects, building systems, fieldwork, digital tools and material experimentation.

This pedagogical work has also expanded internationally. As visiting professor and invited teacher, Haiek Coll has developed Floating Landscapes with IAAC / X-Urban Lab in Barcelona, Molecular Landscapes at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, and Microscopic Landscapes through DigitalFUTURES. These formats operate from floating and territorial landscapes to microscopic and molecular readings, expanding architectural education through geography, ecology, engineering, computation, material science and environmental representation. The work has been supported through internationalisation frameworks at Umeå University and through collaborations with academic partners abroad.

His freestanding course Mapping Changing Ecosystems focuses on multidimensional mapping of fragile ecological bodies, supply chains, geo-engineering and planetary resources. The international summer school series Sol y Sombraextended this methodology to South America, following the steps of Alexander von Humboldt toward the source of the Orinoco River while examining extractivist conflict, shadow ecologies, hydrology, geology, anthropology, migration and territorial representation. At UMA, Haiek Coll has also lectured in technology and urban planning courses, coordinated digital seminars, contributed to BA and MA teaching, and participated in academic and pedagogical development across the school.

His collaborative work at Umeå is central to his academic profile. Projects such as The Collaborative Nordic Arctic Atlas, Winter Garden Structures, Pallet Parliament and Meadow Parklet connect architectural research with municipal planning, public space, environmental art, ecological restoration and scientific exchange. These collaborations have involved Umeå Municipality, including actors connected to streets, parks, landscape and rural strategic development; the Arctic Research Centre; the Department of Molecular Biology; the Department of Informatics and UX Lab; Umeå Institute of Design; UmArts; cultural institutions such as Bildmuseet and Norrlandsoperan; and community organisations and local actors in places such as Holmön and Norrbyskär. The recent Faculty Collaboration Award recognises this sustained capacity to build operative bridges between research, teaching, public engagement, scientific environments, cultural institutions and civic actors.

Haiek Coll’s practice has been internationally framed through critical readings that identify collaboration, local intelligence and public agency as operative conditions of the work. In Radical Architecture of the Future, Beatrice Galilee includes Lab.Pro.Fab / The Public Machinery within a wider discussion of architectural practices that expand beyond conventional building production into installations, digital environments, art, films, virtual realities and spatial research. Her reading of the practice emphasises infrastructural ecosystems, civic deficits, industrial waste and collective repair, positioning the work between design, architecture, the city and public transformation.

Martino Stierli, MoMA curator, selected Lab.Pro.Fab / The Public Machinery for Metropolis Magazine’s New Talent issue. The text highlights the practice’s design ethic of “técnicas mestizas / inteligencias locales”, describing a feedback loop between designer, builder and local knowledge. This reading reinforces Haiek Coll’s work as a socially and politically transformative practice operating from micro to macro scales, where buildings and infrastructures are produced through cooperation rather than conventional top-down authorship.

Fabrizio Gallanti discussed his work in ABITARE through questions of citizenship, public space and social infrastructure. Gallanti reads The Public Machinery as a shifting constellation of collaborators from different disciplinary fields, where projects operate as forms of “metropolitan acupuncture” rooted in local needs and capable of introducing change. Josep Maria Montaner, writing for LIGA Space for Architecture, situates Haiek Coll and Lab.Pro.Fab within a lineage of avant-garde and collectivist practice, describing the work as opening an unprecedented path in the recycling of components and in the production of “recycled, intelligent, self-evolving and liberating artifacts.”

His buildings, public infrastructures and pedagogical projects have circulated as case studies in universities, exhibitions and publications in Latin America and internationally. Built in contexts of scarcity, many of these projects transform limited resources into collective intelligence, community infrastructure and spatial agency. Across research, teaching and practice, Haiek Coll understands architecture as a form of territorial diplomacy: a way to read scars, negotiate constraints, engage human and more-than-human actors, and prototype regenerative futures across damaged, contested and emerging landscapes.

Research
Haiek Coll’s research develops transscalar landscape intelligence, evidentiary territorial research and infrastructural ecologies. His work investigates post-extractive territories, fragile ecosystems, altered hydrologies, industrial corridors, Arctic and Nordic territorial transformation, and the social and environmental effects of infrastructural dependency.

Through the Laboratory of Intersectional Ecologies, he leads research-based practice and practice-based research connecting architecture with geography, environmental engineering, molecular biology, informatics, landscape ecology, computation, environmental art, digital media and public advocacy. The laboratory works through geospatial mapping, satellite imagery, fieldwork, environmental sensing, 3D scanning, photogrammetry, complex modelling, AI-assisted visualisation, growth algorithms, multidimensional cartographies and immersive environments.

A central ambition of the laboratory is the development of an Atlas of Conflict Zones: a visual, spatial and material archive of territories affected by socio-ecological distress, industrial disturbance and environmental transformation. The atlas documents territorial scars not only as evidence of damage, but as grounds for restoration, rewilding, regenerative reprogramming, sovereignty, autonomy and new forms of ecological governance.

The research also uses the atlas as a speculative instrument for projecting new territorial forms: bioregional frameworks, responsive, metabolic and learning infrastructures, ecological corridors, protective buffer zones and reparatory grounds. These territorial futures seek to reveal unseen dimensions of socio-ecological landscapes while rethinking nature rights, land rights, protected boundaries and the institutional conditions required for long-term ecological repair.

Collaboration / External Engagement

Haiek Coll’s recent work at Umeå has been developed through long-term collaborative platforms linking research, teaching, public space, environmental art and civic engagement. Projects such as The Collaborative Nordic Arctic Atlas, Winter Garden Structures, Pallet Parliament and Meadow Parklet have connected UMA with Umeå Municipality, the Arctic Research Centre, the Department of Molecular Biology, the Department of Informatics and UX Lab, Umeå Institute of Design, UmArts, Bildmuseet, Norrlandsoperan, and community organisations and local actors in Holmön, Norrbyskär and other sites.

These collaborations operate across municipal planning, rural strategic development, streets, parks and landscape work, ecological restoration, public space prototyping, scientific exchange, immersive media and cultural programming. The Faculty Collaboration Award recognises this sustained capacity to generate bridges between academic research, pedagogical environments, public institutions, scientific departments, cultural platforms and communities.