Manuel Bouzas Barcala

Manuel Bouzas is a Spanish architect who was recently hired as an Assistant Professor of Architectural Design at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning after serving as a Visiting Critic. His work operates at the intersection of architecture, ecology, and material culture, spanning design, teaching, curation, and publishing. In 2025, he co-curated Internalities, the Spanish Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, and received the Princess of Girona Arts Prize from the Royal Family of Spain. He is also coeditor of Obradoiro, the journal of the Galician Institute of Architects.

His design practice, MB—AE, based in Galicia (Spain), explores the ecological impacts of the resources we consume and the landscapes from which they are extracted. His projects have received support from both public and private institutions, including the Government of Spain, Villa Medici: The French Academy in Rome, CHANEL, ARCO, Massimo Dutti, and the Arquia Foundation. Notable recent works include 350.000 Ha in Madrid (2026), Atlas in Braga (2025), Cabane 7L in Rome (2024), and the Mediterranean Pavilion in Valencia (2023).

Bouzas has contributed to the Oslo Architecture Triennale (2026) Biennale d’Architecture et de Paysage (2025), the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale—Foodscapes (2023) and Becoming (2018), as well as to the Spanish Architecture and Urbanism Biennial (2025, and 2021). His work has been recognized with the ROOM Prize for Emerging Career (2025) and Ephemeral Architecture (2026), the Renzo Piano World Tour Award (2022), the La Caixa Fellowship (2021), and the COAM Emerging Award (2020). His projects have been widely featured in international design media, including Dezeen, Arquitectura Viva, Domus, Design Boom, ArchDaily, El País, El Mundo, and AD Magazine.

Bouzas earned his M.Arch. with distinction from the Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM) and holds a Master in Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he also served as a Teaching Fellow in the Undergraduate Architecture Studies program.