Jose Luis Vallejo

Jose Luis Vallejo is a licensed architect, landscape architect, and urban designer with over twenty-five years of experience spanning professional practice, research, and higher education, working at the intersection of architecture, urban design, environmental performance, and technological innovation. He is the founder and director of Ecosistema Urbano, an international architecture and urban innovation practice established in 2000, through which he has led a sustained body of work focused on the design of socio-environmental systems that integrate public space, ecology, technology, and citizen participation as operative design tools.

Under his leadership, Ecosistema Urbano has developed urban and architectural projects across Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, collaborating with local, regional, and national governments, universities, and multilateral institutions, including the United Nations, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank among others.

His work approaches cities as complex metabolic and ecological systems, combining spatial design with research into participatory processes, digital platforms, and communication interfaces that promote civic inclusion, environmental awareness, and more democratic forms of urban life.

Central to his practice is the creation of bioclimatic environments and energy-efficient design strategies, integrating climate-responsive architecture, landscape systems, environmental simulation, resource-aware construction techniques, and computational design tools, often supported by prototyping, digital fabrication, and open-source methodologies.

Alongside his professional practice, Vallejo has maintained a long-standing academic career and has taught architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture at leading international institutions, including Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor, as well as through more than forty international workshops worldwide. His work has received over forty-five international awards and distinctions, including multiple recognitions from UN-Habitat, and has been widely published and exhibited in major museums and cultural institutions such as the Venice Architecture Biennale, the London Design Museum, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Berlin, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Lisbon Architecture Triennale.