Jose Castillo

Jose Castillo is the Chair of the Department of Architecture at Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning and founding principal alongside Saidee Springall of a|911, a practice based in Mexico City. He holds a degree in architecture from the Iberoamericana University in Mexico City and a Master’s and a Doctor of Design degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

a|911’s work includes research, cultural, institutional, housing, mobility projects, urban design, and planning work in various cities in Mexico and Central America. Their award-winning projects include the Spanish Cultural Center, the Elena Garro Cultural Center, the García Terres Library, the Ara Iztacalco housing project, and PILARES Quetzalcoatl. They are currently involved in large-scale master plans, including the Tacubaya and San Lázaro transportation hubs and multi-family housing projects designed in partnership with Productora.

The firm earned the Bronze Medal of the Holcim Awards for Sustainable Construction Latin America (2011), the Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York (2012), and the Audi Urban Future Award (2014). In 2015, a|911 was recognized as the most visionary architectural firm in Mexico by Obras Magazine, and in 2017, Castillo & Springall were selected as a recipient of the Richard Rogers Fellowship, a residency program at the Wimbledon House in London.

His architectural work and writings have been published in Mexico and abroad, including in Praxis Journal, Bomb, 2G, Domus, Arquine, Geographical UK, Monocle, Wallpaper, The New York Times, Architecture, Monument, and Architectural Record. He has also contributed writings to books such as The Endless City, Shaping Cities, Reinventing Construction, La Casa Latinoamericana Moderna, La Arquitectura Importa, and Potato Plan Collection.

Castillo has served as a juror on several competitions, including Bloomberg’s Philanthropies Mayor’s Challenge Latin America, the Global Schindler Award, and most recently, the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize. Castillo is a member of the advisory board of LSE Cities and Urban Age and has been a visiting professor at Harvard’s GSD, the University of Pennsylvania, Tulane, and the IE in Madrid.