LANZA Atelier is an architecture studio based in Mexico City, founded in 2015 by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, with the purpose of making meaningful contributions to the beauty of the world. Since its foundation, LANZA atelier has been nominated for the 2016 Ibero-American Architecture Biennial Award, the Mies Crown Hall Award for Emerging Architects (IIT Chicago) in 2016 and 2022, and the Brick Award 2021. The studio received an Honourable Mention in the 2016 Competition for the El Eco Museum Pavilion and is a recipient of the Young Architects Prize 2017 and the Emerging Voices Award 2023 from the Architectural League of New York, which described their multimodal work as one that “expresses an inventiveness, a sensitivity to context, and a compositional refinement that spans scales and forms.”
LANZA atelier’s first solo exhibition, New Work, took place at SFMOMA in 2018. Since then, their work has been exhibited at the 12th São Paulo Architecture Biennale (2019), the Lisbon Triennale (2019), the Concéntrico Festival in Spain (2021), and the Latin American Architecture Biennial (BAL) 2023. In addition, they have presented their work at Syracuse University (2025), Yale University (2024), CU Denver (2024), UTSA (2023), Cal Poly Pomona as part of the VDL House Residency Program (2022), and the Constructing Practice Symposium at Columbia University (2019), among others. Upcoming projects include a solo exhibition of their furniture designs at AGO Projects in Mexico City, opening on 3 February 2026, and the design of the Pavilion of the Republic of Kosovo for the 61st Venice Art Biennale, curated by José Esparza Chong Cuy and presenting a new commission by Brilant Milazimi titled Hard Teeth (Dhembë të Fortë).
Isabel Martínez Abascal studied architecture at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, the Technische Universität Berlin, and the Vastu Shilpa Foundation in Ahmedabad under B. V. Doshi. She collaborated with SANAA (Tokyo), Aranguren y Gallegos (Madrid), Anupama Kundoo (Berlin), and Pedro Mendes da Rocha (São Paulo). She was a design studio professor for six years at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Escola da Cidade, in São Paulo. She has participated as a faculty member in the 24th International Workshop in Cartagena, the Ibero-American Biennial in Medellín (2010), the International Seminar in Curitiba (2012), and the Rio Olympics Workshop at the California College of the Arts (2012).
She participated in the comisariado of the 10th Biennial of Architecture of São Paulo (2013) and comisarió the exhibition 13 for the inaugural cycle of the La Conservera Museum, Murcia (2014), as well as the exhibition Visionary Instruments by artist Almudena Lobera at the ECCO Museum, Cádiz (2015). From 2015 to 2017, she was Executive Director of LIGA, Space for Architecture, in Mexico City. She co-edited the book Exposed Architecture, published by Park Books. Her proposal, Mother Architecture: Shaping Birth, was a finalist for the Harvard GSD 2023 Wheelwright Prize, and her project, "Investigaciones sobre creación y procreación", received the National Fund for the Arts Prize 2023.
Alessandro Arienzo studied architecture at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, graduating with honours. In 2012, he designed Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura’s inaugural exhibition Happiness Is a Hot (and Cold) Sponge with Rodrigo Escandón. He collaborated with Taller de Arquitectura Rocha + Carrillo, Taller Tornel, and Frida Escobedo, with whom he developed the conceptual project for the Mexico Pavilion at the Victoria & Albert Museum during the London Design Festival 2015, the renovation of the Fondo de Cultura Octavio Paz bookshop (2013), and the Public Stage Pavilion for the Lisbon Triennial (2013).
He explores the possibilities of architectural practice through hand-drawing and publishing projects, including the Housetypes book series. In 2017, he received the National Fund for the Arts Young Creators Prize. With this grant, he developed an investigation into the Security and Citizen Participation Modules network, the resulting work of which became part of SFMOMA’s permanent collection in 2018. Several of his designs have been showcased institutionally, including A Family of 4, which is part of the Denver Art Museum collection.
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