Memory and culture. Pavilion Espartal pavilion TAC! 2025 by ELE, GA, Galecio and Gubbins

GA ESTUDIO was founded in Santiago de Chile in 2008 by architects and educators Tomás García de la Huerta (1981, Chile) and Xaviera Gleixner (1984, Chile). The studio's work has been developed and exhibited mainly in Chile, although it has also reached other countries such as France, Italy, England, Argentina, Germany, and Portugal. Their work has been presented at prominent events such as the 16th Santiago de Chile Architecture Biennial (2008), the 14th Buenos Aires International Architecture Biennial (2013), the 19th Chilean Architecture and Urbanism Biennial (2015), the 16th and 17th Venice Architecture Biennale (2018 and 2020), and the 21st Chilean Architecture and Urbanism Biennial (2019). In 2019, the studio won First Place in the “WALK&TALK PAVILION” competition during the Azores Art Festival, Portugal, and in 2018, it received an award in the Young Architects of Latin America competition for its project “Free Schools,” presented at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale. Additionally, the studio won First Place in the “Refugio de la Memoria” competition in the Los Lagos Region, Chile, in 2015, and was selected in 2025 as one of the 10 proposals to represent Chile at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Its founding members are faculty members at various institutions. Tomás García de la Huerta has taught at the Universidad del Desarrollo, the University of Chile, the Universidad San Sebastián, the University of Talca, and the Universidad Andrés Bello, while Xaviera Gleixner teaches at the Universidad del Desarrollo and the Universidad Andrés Bello.

Florencia Galecio Donoso is a Chilean architect (1998). He began his studies in 2016 at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where he obtained both the title of Architect and the Master of Architecture in 2021.

His work focuses on the intersections between architecture, ecology and care, exploring how to project spaces that respond to the challenges of climate change from a scale both territorial and microscopic. In his master's thesis, entitled "Architecture between the immunological and the microscopic: the reconfiguration of the minimum existence through the act of care (coidar, cogitare) in the salaries of Atacama before the climate crisis", he raises a critical reflection on architecture as a care tool in the face of invisible threats, such as pollution or water scarcity. Through architectural devices such as capsules, bunkers and refuges located in the Atacama desert, Galecio Donoso proposes an architecture that not only mitigates, but also generates symbiosis with fragile ecosystems. His work is characterized by a project sensibility that connects body, territory and ecology.

Juan Gubbins Correa was born in Temuco on October 28, 1995. He began studying Architecture at the University of Chile in 2014, completing his fourth year at the University of Porto, Portugal, between 2017 and 2018. He completed his studies at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, where he obtained his degree in Architecture and a Master's degree in Architecture in 2021, with his thesis Edificio Errante (Wandering Building). During his formative years and his first years as a professional, he was an assistant in architectural design workshops at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Chile. In 2023, he was a professor of Digital Drawing at the University of Las Américas (UDLA) and of Materials Technology at the University of Talca (UTALCA). He participated in the construction of the inflatable pavilion designed by Smiljan Radic and Nicolas Schmidt for the 23rd Architecture Biennial in Chile, and in the development of a private competition at the office of Christian Kerez. He currently works as an independent architect in Berlin. He has been part of the collective studio Zócalo Arquitectura since 2022 and has collaborated with GA Estudio on several occasions to date. In 2024, he collaborated with NORDSTUDIO Berlin and is currently with Álvaro Urbano Studio.