Alonso L Ortega he/him is a transdisciplinary architectural designer, artist, educator, and researcher based in New York City. His work investigates materiality as political, the influence of digital processes on design language, and architecture’s capacity to respond to diverse cultural, social, technological, and spatial conditions across multiple scales.

 

Ortega currently serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), where his teaching fosters experimental and exploratory approaches to contemporary questions of spatial justice, equity, coloniality, and the social responsibilities of architectural practice. He also teaches at Parsons School of Design, where his pedagogy focuses on spatial relationships, volumetric interactions, material assemblies, representational systems, and emerging modes of physical and digital visualization.

 

Ortega also works with Mario Gooden Studio, where he undertakes design, leadership, coordination, and project-management responsibilities while engaging critically with the cultural landscape and the intersections of architecture, race, gender, sexuality, history, and emerging technologies.

His work has received numerous awards, citations, and recognitions and has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy; Università Roma Tre in Rome, Italy; Charlotte Street Foundation, Art in the Loop Foundation, and 21c Museum Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri; and Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.

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Extending this work beyond the academy and architectural practice, Ortega serves on New York City’s Suicide Prevention Task Force, contributing an architectural and spatial perspective to interdisciplinary conversations surrounding suicide prevention, public health, the built environment, and the development of more responsive and equitable approaches to urban space.

 

Ortega holds a Master of Architecture from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Architecture from Iowa State University. His ongoing practice is grounded in curiosity, critical inquiry, and a commitment to questioning disciplinary conventions. Across design, research, education, and public service, Ortega continues to expand the boundaries of architectural practice by examining how architecture can operate not simply as the production of buildings, but as a cultural, political, and spatial framework capable of responding to the complexities of contemporary life.