Alejandro Haiek Coll

Presentation
Alejandro Haiek Coll is a Swedish-Venezuelan practicing architect, researcher and educator, working as Associate Professor at Umeå School of Architecture, Umeå University. His work moves across post-extractive ecologies, landscapes intelligence, environmental justice, territorial and interspecies design, regional planning, public art, urban design, environmental humanities, digital media and civic infrastructure. Through the synergy between his experimental Laboratory of Prototypes and Fabrication, Lab.Pro.Fab, and the multiscalar, transdisciplinary framework of the Laboratory of Intersectional Ecologies at UMA School of Architecture, he develops research-based practice, practice-based research and research-based teaching that connect academic inquiry, experimental pedagogy, public institutions, cultural platforms and communities.

At UMA School of Architecture, Haiek Coll is the leader of the long-standing MA Studio 12: Altered Geographies, focused on territorial and interspecies design, spatial-ecological justice, bio-regional planning and systemic transformation (see current Studio research theme). As Head of Research of the Laboratory of Intersectional Ecologies, he investigates new correlations between social landscapes, ecosystem services and post-industrial geographies, working towards a global atlas of territorial diplomacy and advocacy addressing conflict zones, environmental constraints and regenerative futures.

Haiek Coll’s living laboratories and explorative practice are activated through The Public Machinery, an action-based operational network of cooperation where buildings, performances, eco-installations and civic infrastructures gain public life through the choreography of multiple publics, institutions, communities, policy actors, NGOs, grassroots organisations, makers, artists, engineers and environmental agents.

His work is situated within transscalar landscape intelligence and infrastructural ecologies, at the intersection of architecture, territorial and interspecies design, regional planning, geography, environmental engineering, molecular biology, informatics, computational design and environmental art. These disciplinary crossings are translated into interfaces and outputs such as eco-installations, performative installations, digital media, community and cultural infrastructures, regenerative public infrastructures and immersive environments, through which territorial evidence becomes transscalar mediation, embodied experience and public engagement. Across these fields, Haiek Coll studies landscapes as active systems of matter, policy, ecology, technology and social interrelations.

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 and mega-territorial systems, moving from planetary supply chains and networks to molecular and bio-based processes in order to understand post-industrial environments as fields of conflict, memory, intelligence and possible regeneration. By coining the term territorial epigenetics, Haiek Coll frames altered landscapes as ecological bodies whose scars, residues and palimpsests are not only marks of damage, but also carriers of latent regenerative behaviours, inherited pressures and future forms of adaptation across transindustrial territories.

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 and the archaeology of industrial ruins. This line of inquiry also informs his editorial and visual essay work, including The Future of Urban Forms: A Re-reading of Self-generating Geomorphology, published in Dearq no. 39, which revisits self-constructed territories, urban geomorphologies and cooperative forms of spatial intelligence through image, text and territorial memory.

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 Book, 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 (See The World Around global platform / Young Climate Prize).

Martino Stierli, MoMA’s Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, selected Lab.Pro.Fab / The Public Machinery for Metropolis Magazine’s New Talent issue. In the article Stierli 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 collaborative work at Umeå is central to his academic profile and is organised across artistic research, pedagogical platforms, research and development prototypes, and public-facing living laboratories.

The Collaborative Nordic-Arctic Atlas was developed as an open laboratory for territorial violence, environmental justice, mapping, scanning and visual evidence in the Nordic Arctic region. Conceived through collaboration between UmArts Research Centre, the Arctic Research Centre, design and media collaborators, researchers, students and external discussants, the project treated the exhibition itself as a research environment. It combined field documentation, infrastructure maps, scientific tables, scanned objects, immersive territorial models and public discussion to make non-visible infrastructural power, agents of disturbance and ecological vulnerabilities spatially legible.

Winter Garden Structures investigates climate devices and bioclimatic structures as mediating forms between public life, environmental performance and Nordic seasonal conditions. Developed through the UmArts Small Visionary Project framework with the School of Informatics, UX Lab, Prof. Fatemeh Moradi, students and curatorial dialogue connected to Bildmuseet, the project reframes winter infrastructure not only as shelter, but as a socially and ecologically responsive prototype. It opened a concrete line of collaboration between architecture, informatics, interaction design, environmental mediation and artistic research, later extending into seminars, public events and conference dissemination.

Pallet Parliament and Meadow Parklet were developed through the GoGreenRoutes framework with Umeå Municipality, Umeå School of Architecture and local stakeholders. Pallet Parliament transformed an unused urban parking lot into an upcycled civic infrastructure operating as a stage, playground, open classroom and intergenerational meeting device. The project connected municipal planning, EU-funded experimentation, academic design and community use, involving Umeå Municipality, local intergenerational music groups, Böle preschool, Engelska Skolan, Vakin, Volvo and the GoGreenRoutes European research team.
Meadow Parklet extended this civic and ecological approach through a network of multispecies biotopes designed to rewild urban pockets and improve coexistence between flora, fauna, fungi and public life. Developed with Umeå Municipality, Umeå School of Architecture, Böle Kindergarten, Bostaden, Engelska Skolan, Volvo, the GoGreenRoutes research team and municipal actors connected to landscape and infrastructure, the project translated ecological design into a participatory urban prototype. It framed the parklet not as public furniture, but as a small urban ecological infrastructure capable of supporting multispecies cohabitation, environmental awareness and intergenerational learning.

Other collaborative platforms include Future Gardens, a soundscape and video installation for the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2025–2026, developed with SOS Orinoco, Grupo Orinoco, local stakeholders in the Venezuelan Amazon and the Department of Molecular Biology at Umeå University through dialogue with Prof. Teresa Frisan. The project connects artistic installation, territorial evidence and molecular/ecological research around post-extractive ecologies, chemosynthetic processes and speculative environmental regeneration. Liminal Phantoms, presented through the North Pole Transborder Pavilion at Triennale Milano, extends this research into mixed reality, algorithmic visualisation and immersive territorial representation in collaboration with the Arctic Research Centre, UmArts Research Centre and Circolo Scandinavo.

Through Studio 12, Haiek Coll has also developed long-term pedagogical collaborations with Umeå Municipality, the Streets and Parks Department, Landscape Sweden, marine and regional actors, SLU Urban Landscape Transformation, community organisations in Holmön, Norrbyskär and Stöcke, and interdepartmental partners including Informatics, Molecular Biology and Environmental Ecology. The recent Faculty Collaboration Award recognises this sustained capacity to build operative bridges between research, teaching, public engagement, scientific environments, cultural institutions, municipal departments and civic actors.

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 grants, fellowships, awards, and recognitions

2025–2026
Chicago Architecture Biennial: The Future Gardens

2024–2025
Milano Triennale: The North Pole Transborder Pavilion

2025
Featured in the UN Habitat guide of Best Urban Practices in Latin America. World Urban Forum, Cairo

2025
Selected at Zürich Architectural Documentary Film Festival. The Social Ecology Approach of Alejandro Haiek

2024
Sveriges Radio: Besserwisser (P1, UR) Malin Olofsson Interview architecture and its societal impact. Part 1 / Part 2

2024
Nomination, Nordea Innovation Award for Utilization

2023–2024
Visionary project grant UmArts Research Center
The Collaborative Nordic Arctic Atlas.

2022–2023
Visionary project grant. UmArts Research Center
The Winter Gardens

2022–2024
GoGreenRoutes EU project funding. Pallet Parliament and Meadow Parklet, Umeå, Sweden

2022
Conversations with Extractivism
Hybrid Symposium, Monash University. Melbourne

2019
WOJR Prize for Architecture. Architecture Fellowship, Industries of Nature. ACT01 Umbria, Italy

2018–2019
Nominee, Royal Academy Dorfman Prize. London

2019
Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis. Reframing Green Spaces, British Council

2018
Testing Innovations: New Visions for an Enduring Global Phenomenon symposium, Harvard University

2017
Commendation, The Architectural Review Award

2016
Winner of the XX Panamerican Quito Biennial Categories: Urban, Architecture and Reuse Award

2016
Nominee, MCHAP Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize

2016
Nominee, Oscar Niemeyer Award for Latin American Architecture

2015
Selected as New Talent, nominated by MoMA curator Martino Stierli. Metropolis Magazine / NY

2013
First Prize, International Award of Public Art. Shanghai

2011
National Prize of Culture, mention in architecture. Vzla

2011
First Prize, EME3 International Festival of Architecture. Barcelona

Haiek Coll has taught internationally at Parsons, Harvard, the AA, KTH, IAAC, Tokyo Geidai, Elam, and Escola da Cidade among others.