Ana María Durán Calisto

Ana María Durán is an Ecuadorian architect, scholar, and urban-environmental planner whose work explores the intersection of ecology, architecture, art, infrastructure and urbanization in the Amazon basin and beyond. She holds a Master of Architecture from UPenn and a PhD in Urban Planning from UCLA. In 2002, she co-founded Estudio A0 (now Studio A0) with British-Punjabi architect Jaskran Kalirai. The studio has designed a diverse array of multi-scalar projects in close collaboration with clients and community partners. Estudio A0’s exhibition “Surfacing - The Civilised Agroecological Forests of Amazonia,” co-created with Omere, was featured in the 2023 Venice Biennale. A new co-produced iteration of it will be exhibited in a83 gallery in New York, thanks to a Graham Foundation grant, and will be presented at the Centro Cultural Metropolitano of Quito. The studio´s research and design projects have also been showcased in Post-Extractivist Imaginaries (La Biennale di Venezia 2025); the XX Chilean Architecture and Urbanism Biennial (2017); the National Museum of Ecuador (2025); the Art Gallery of Alberta (2022), Quito´s CCM (2019), Arte Actual (FLACSO 2011), the Pratt Institute (2012), and CCEba (2010). Durán Calisto has co-edited influential publications on ecological and agroecological urbanisms and contributes essays internationally. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Architecture, a member of the Science Panel for the Amazon, a Public Voices fellow (Yale cohort), and the recipient of the 2022 Mark Cousins Theory Award. As a Loeb Fellow at Harvard GSD (2011), she co-founded the South America Project. She has been advisor to the Ecuadorian Minister on Housing and Urban Development for the UN Conference Habitat III; and consultant for CAF’s program on BiodiverCities and IDB´s Amazonia Forever program. In 2006 she was the Executive Secretary and curator of the XV Quito Pan-American Architecture Biennial: Visible Cities. She is a member of diverse scientific committees and participates as juror in international design competitions (BIAU 2024, Dezeen Awards 2025, Architecture Hunter Awards 2026).