Territory, tradition, and future in the winning projects of the TAC! 2025 Festival

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.

Estudio Latente is a collaborative practice led by Andrea Molina Cuadro, Alberto Martínez García, Alejandro Carrasco Hidalgo, and Eduardo Cilleruelo Terán. Their work operates at the intersection of architecture, technology, infrastructure, and ecology, exploring how these dimensions intertwine in the production of contemporary territories.

Alberto Martínez García is an architect and researcher from Madrid, currently based in the United States. His work lies at the intersection of architecture, ecology, and colonialism, with a particular focus on modes of representation. He is currently pursuing a PhD at Yale University.

Andrea Molina Cuadro is an architect, researcher, and educator based in Los Angeles, working at the intersection of design, art, and ecology. She is pursuing her doctoral studies and teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Alejandro Carrasco Hidalgo is an architect, researcher, and educator. He is currently pursuing his doctoral dissertation at the University of Alcalá. His research focuses on the role of spatiality in the relationship between colonialism, modernity, extraction, and the construction of national identity.

Eduardo Cilleruelo Terán is an Assistant Professor at the Huckabee College of Architecture, Texas Tech University. An architect, researcher, and educator based in the United States, his work explores the relationship between infrastructure and data management, and how these reshape the ways of thinking and projecting contemporary architecture.

Alejandro Carrasco Hidalgo is an architect, researcher, and lecturer. He is currently developing his doctoral thesis at the University of Alcalá with a predoctoral fellowship awarded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Government of Spain. His research focuses on the role of spatiality in the relationship between colonialism, modernity, extraction, and the construction of national identity. He holds a degree in architecture from the University of Alcalá and a Master's degree in Architectural History from the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL (University College London). He was recently a visiting researcher at the University of Basel and the Bartlett School of Architecture. He is also the founder and editor of Momentum Magazine, a publication dedicated to the dissemination of architectural manifestos. His work has been exhibited and published by institutions such as the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB), the Sarah Remond Parker Centre at UCL, Drawing Matter, and the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome.

Andrea Molina Cuadro is a Spanish architect, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of design, art, and ecology. Andrea is based in New York and teaches at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). She is currently coordinating the Bauhaus of the Seas Sails art-narrative project in collaboration with TBA21. Andrea has been a Curatorial Fellow at Storefront for Art and Architecture and an artist-in-residence at Art Omi: Architecture 2025 and the Instituto Mutante de Narrativas Ambientales (IMNA) at Matadero Madrid in 2020. She has also worked as a researcher at the Center for Spatial Research (CSR) at Columbia University and as an architect at Estudio Herreros in Madrid. Her work has been awarded the Graham Foundation Grants for Individuals 2023 and published in e-flux Architecture and The Architect's Newspaper, among other publications. Andrea holds a degree in architecture from the University of Alcalá and the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM), and a master's degree in Critical Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture from Columbia University.