Currently, he is a tenured Assistant Professor in Proyectos Arquitectónicos at the Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain, and Research Affiliate at the Jaap Bakema Study Centre, Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam. He co-initiated the research group Architecture. Bodies, Others with Paula Lacomba in 2025. Between 2021-2024, he worked as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellow at TU Delft and Research Associate at the Research Center for Material Culture (Netherlands), where he developed the EU-funded research project ‘Multiculturalism in the work of Aldo and Hannie van Eyck’.
The work of Aldo and Hannie van Eyck
Alejandro received his Ph.D. in the history and theory of architecture from Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain. Aldo van Eyck: Le Musée Imaginaire (2018) is both a short-film and a dissertation that explore the Van Eyck family house as a memory space, home and archive, an entry to document and unpack the ways architectural design, domesticity, global travels and art collecting are intersecting fields, and how they sustained a non-functionalist view from which architecture was profoundly re-conceptualized. He is the editor and Spanish translator of Van Eyck’s The Child, the City,and the Artist (El niño, la ciudad y el artista, Arquia, 2021), awarded at the XII Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, as well as translator of Aldo van Eyck: The Circle and the Centre (calmo, 2023). These and many other publications consolidate him as an expert on Aldo and Hannie van Eyck’s work and thinking. On this basis, he has been invited to lecture on the Van Eycks at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences (2022), Politecnico di Milano (2023), Architecture Foundation (UK, 2020), Universidad Finis Terrae (2020), or Nieuwe Instituut (2018). With Dirk van den Heuvel, Alejandro is now co-curating the exhibition “Built Homecoming” at Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, with the results of his work on the Van Eycks’ home.
Modernity and Coloniality
In recent years, he has problematised his previous expertise through a post/de-colonial lens, focusing on questions of embodiment, cultural extraction, and intersectionality. Together with Paula Lacomba Montes, he has published on grammars of alterity, female agency within welfare state institutions, or re-enacments as a mode of architectural inquiry. Connected to these critical approaches, he was member of the organising committee of the international conference “The Observers Observed: Architectural Uses of Ethnography” (Delft and Rotterdam, 24-25 November 2021), as well as “ Architectural Archives of the Future” (Delft and Rotterdam, 22-23 November 2023). In 2022, he organised the seminar ‘From Multicultural to Pluriversal: Rethinking Universalist Notions in Modern Architecture’ at Leiden Volkenkunde (Ethnographic Museum). He also participated in the summer school ‘Learning to Unlearn Decolonially - Disobeying, Delinking and Relinking’ by University College Utrecht.
School Architecture
Next to his work on Team 10 and Aldo van Eyck, Alejandro has prominently published on post-war school architecture in its intersection with welfare states development and notions of domesticity. Led by Paula Lacomba, this line of research provides a nuanced understanding of the influence of societal transformations and cultural specificities on architectural practice, positing that understanding entrenched domestic aspects can enrich the discourse on educational spaces. They argue for situatedness and exceptionalism through comparative discussions.
Academic Background
Alejandro studied Architecture in Universitat Politècnica de València (2007-2013) and defended his Ph.D. in 2018. Before his tenure at TU Delft, he has been an Invited Lecturer at Escuela de Arquitectura FAD, Universidad Finis Terrae (Chile, 2021-2022), Postdoctoral Researcher of Emergent Design Methodologies at the Department of Architecture, Aalto University (Finland, 2018-2019), and Predoctoral and Teaching Fellow at the Department of Architecture, TU Valencia (Spain, 2015-2018). He has taught Design Studios, Theory and History of Architecture, and also given lectures at different universities in Spain, UK, Netherlands and Finland. Alejandro has received several Research and Academic Prizes such as the SAH Opler Membership Grant for Emerging Scholars and Professionals (2022), the Biannual Prize for Doctoral Dissertations in the field of Architectural History (Asociación de historiadores de la Arquitectura y el Urbanismo, 2021), the Seal of Excellence Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (European Commission, 2019), and the First Prize at the II Research Awards at the XIV Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (Spanish Ministry of Development, 2018). He has published numerous articles and chapters in scientific peer-reviewed journals and has presented his work at several international conferences.He is also an editorial board member of Revue de Recherches sur Le Corbusier.
Architect and Artist
In 2019, Alejandro co-founded Arqtistic, an architecture office based in Spain, where he continues his practice as a designer and web artist.
exhibition
“Built Homecoming”
curated by Alejandro Campos and Dirk van den Heuvel
'Built Homecoming' presents the house of Aldo and Hannie van Eyck through a series of vitrines. These eight display cases capture special corners of the house, including the objects that populate these places. Through an arrangement of selected films, interior images, archival material, and artefacts from their home archive, the exhibition invites visitors to rediscover their work and ideas, while engaging with the complexities and implications of their approach to architecture and culture, particularly in relation to notions of Westernness and Eurocentricity. The choice of vitrines is crucial in this respect. Vitrines are a classic means of display, but they are also highly ambiguous: paradoxically, they are instruments of isolation and objectification, even as they provide protection and a temporary home for the selected materials. They regulate access and visibility, control the visitor’s gaze and frame the interpretation of the objects, ultimately shaping the narratives that surround them. The exhibition aims to critically rethink this framing, in order to reverse the objectifying gaze and allow for the relativity and reciprocity advocated by the Van Eycks.
Research Centre
Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam
September 2024 - January 2025
book chapter
Between Myth and Bricolage:
Aldo van Eyck and Lina Bo Bardi’s engagement with world cultures
by Alejandro Campospp. 220-243
in Lina por Aldo: Afinidades no pensamento dos arquitetos Lina Bo Bardi e Aldo van Eyck
published by Editorial Cobogó
Edited by Isabel Diegues and Jorn Konijn
2024, Portuguese, 400 pages
conference presentation
Objetos Otros: Arquitectura Moderna, universalismo y colonialidad
by Alejandro CamposLa vida de las cosas: Modos de existencia, supervivencia y agencia de la cultura visual,
Centro Materia
Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero
November 2024
journal article
Female Agency in the British Ministry of Education: Mary Medd's Contribution to School Design
by Paula Lacomba and Alejandro Campos
This paper describes and discusses architect Mary Medd’s input into school development within the Ministry of Education, highlighting her agency and capacity to provide significant change in the discipline of architecture. Her contributions were outcast on two fronts: first, by an institutional framework that prioritised anonymous civil service expertise, thereby suppressing individual attribution, and second, as one half of a prosperous partnership, both professional and personal, with David Medd. Although the collective processes within public institutions normally imply that any attribution to a single person is ambiguous, this paper suggests that the institutional framework should not be interpreted as a hindrance to the recognition of Mary Medd’s authorship. The Ministry of Education offered a place for the development of a different kind of architectural practice where her individual agency could be exercised both as a designer of spatial layouts and as the main catalyst of a holistic interdisciplinary collaboration. By shedding light on the gendered disparities in architectural history and emphasising the importance of acknowledging women’s contributions, this study adds to the broader conversation on gender equity in design and education, ultimately enriching our understanding of the multifaceted history of architectural practice.
published by Architectural Histories, 12(1),
EAHN
2024