Los Arcos Gaztelu was founded in 2020 as a response to the need to formalise a collaborative body of work that had been developing since 2012. It succeeds the practice previously known as Gaztelu Jerez Arquitectos, active since 2006, and thus begins as an architectural studio with over a decade of professional experience.
The studio’s work spans all scales, from domestic architecture and interior design to landscape interventions and civic projects, and is combined with research and teaching at the university level. The studio understands architecture as a discipline that envelops and affects almost everything around us, with the human being as its central focus. A building should be intentionally placed in a location, or even constitute a place in itself. Location, climate, culture, function, and construction techniques are among its main points of reference.
In today’s context, the studio considers its work should be simultaneously “global” and “local.” It believes architecture should be a product of its time while also aspiring to timelessness; it should be rooted in the present while looking to the future without losing sight of the past. The studio values simplicity, austerity, and constructional rigour, and understands architecture as a fundamentally humanist and service-oriented activity, aimed at improving the environment in which people carry out their daily activities, and ultimately enhancing human life. Its work has been awarded, exhibited, and published on numerous occasions, including the Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2018), the Vasco-Navarro Official College of Architects Awards (2019, 2013), and the COACYLE/Burgos Awards (2019, 2016). Publications include METALOCUS, AITIM, Arquitectura Viva, El País, ON Diseño, and TectónicaBlog, among others.
Koldo Fernández Gaztelu (San Sebastián, 1980) graduated with distinction from the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Navarra (ETSA Navarra) in 2004 and completed a postgraduate degree in Architectural Restoration and Rehabilitation the same year. He is an Associate Professor of Architectural Design at EINA, the School of Engineering and Architecture at the University of Zaragoza.
He has worked in the studios of Ochotorena, KSP Engel und Zimmermann, Francisco Mangado, and Gálvez + Wieczorek. In 2005, he began his doctoral studies at the Higher Technical School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (ETSAM). In 2006, he participated in the workshop “Four Energy Observatories,” directed by Iñaki Ábalos, part of the I Canary Islands Biennial of Architecture, Art, and Landscape in La Palma. He has also taught at the Higher Center of Interior Design of Navarra and served as a visiting lecturer at the Universidade da Beira Interior (Covilhã, Portugal).
Amaia Los Arcos graduated with distinction from ETSA Navarra in 2005 and completed a postgraduate degree in Landscape and Environment the same year. From 2006 to 2012, she worked at IDOM Professional Services (IDOM ACXT), contributing to large-scale projects and new project development processes such as BIM (Building Information Modeling), while also serving as an external architectural consultant for firms like Ikertalde Grupo Consultor. In 2005, she began her doctoral studies at ETSAM. She has furthered her training in sustainability through the study of nearly zero-energy building standards, such as Passivhaus, and through specialised training in building diagnostics and pathologies.
