Alejandro Haiek Coll
Practice: Alejandro Haiek Coll
Established: 1995
City: Caracas
Country: Venezuela
www.labprofab.com
[email protected]
Haiek qualified as as architect at the Universidad Central de Venezuela where he was awarded Magíster Scientiarum Honourable Mention in Architectural Design.
He has taught in the Project Investigation Workshop on the MA course in Architecture at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, on the MA course in Architectural Design at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and on the MA course in Technology at the Universidad Andrés Bello, where he has also been a professor in the Architectural Workshop and in the Graphic Representation and Three-Dimensional Modelling Laboratory. He was a professor in the Computer Graphics Laboratory in the Design School at the Universidad de Chile. He was Coordinator of Research and Development, a professor in the Architectural Workshop and of the seminar programme at the Universidad de las Ciencias, Artes y Comunicaciones, Chile. He has also been a guest lecturer at the Universidad Simón Bolívar and the Universidad José María Vargas, Caracas, Venezuela.
Alejandro Haiek Coll
Tiuna El Fuerte Cultural Park
The concept for Tiuna El Fuerte Cultural Park is based on an academic and recreational production system providing services in the fields of art, work and communications. It is located in the heart of El Valle civil parish, which is known as a community with great artistic activity. The park houses more than 500 children each day and provides them with a cultural and artistic education within a framework of sustainable architecture.
| How does diversity of people reveal itself at work? | By connecting practice with all dimensions of reality, understanding it as a social act that works on human activities and operates in all their territories. |
| Do you think our profession is diverse enough? | Architecture's diversity moves through contrary fields that go from luxury to emergency, from refinement to common sense, from mass production to recycling, from standardisation to customisation, from local determination to global indetermination, from multiplicity to specificity. |
| Who are your role models who inspire you? | People who survive daily with minimum resources, creating their means of support in extreme situations. |
| If you could change one thing in our profession, what would it be? | Dogmatism, closed structures and regressive spirals. |
| What do you find most rewarding in your area of work? | When the design object goes beyond its physical condition and all the activities supported by it start having autonomy, favouring the user's behaviour. However, what I really find interesting in a building is when its material aspect fades away and ends up only as a support, amplifying cultural behaviour and dynamics and making its contextual presence and its temporal moment more appropriate. |
| How have your clients and projects benefited from your involvement? | My clients and projects get benefits from a laboratory that works with an applied research protocol, which is focused on the efficiency of construction systems and the use of alternative materials. They also benefit from a multi-disciplinary structure that has its centre in the environment and in the closeness between the user and the environment. |