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Carlos Brillembourg, FAIA, is a registered architect and principal of Carlos Brillembourg Architects, based in New York. He received his Masters in Architecture from Columbia University in 1975. After working for Mitchell/Giurgola in New York (1977) and W.J. Alcock in Caracas (1975-76) he established his own practice in Caracas in 1980. Subsequently in 1984 he founded Carlos Brillembourg Architects in New York. His built work includes a theatre, a sports center, office buildings, apartment buildings, a 250- room hotel, numerous single-family residences, and art galleries.
Parallel to his practice he has taught at the Simon Bolivar University in Caracas, the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, in New York (1984-85), and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he taught ‘Latin American Architecture, 1929-2012’.
He was a founding member of the Instituto de Arquitectura Urbana (IAU) in Caracas (1977). As the director of this urban laboratory, he led a team of twenty architects that produced urban design solutions for the city of Caracas and other cities such as Ciudad Guyana. He has organized conferences at the New School University on the subjects of “Globalization and Architecture” and “Nature and Architecture”. He organized with MoMA and the Vera List Center of New School University an all day seminar entitled: “Latin American Architecture 1929-1960: Contemporary Reflections”. He has been the contributing editor for Architecture for Bomb magazine since 1992.
He has received awards such as 40 under 40, Architectural Record House Award, The Biennial of Architecture Award (Venezuela) for a single-family residence (Palmasola). His proposal for a New World Center was exhibited in the American pavilion of the Architecture Biennial in Venice 2002.
His work has been widely published in the New York Times Magazine, Architectural Record, House and Garden, Casa Vogue, Gran Harper’s Bazaar, Interiors, Contract Design, The East Hampton Star, the Daily News, The New York Post, Michael Webb’s Beach Houses (2002), Paul Goldberger’s Houses of the Hamptons (1986), Max Protetch’s A New World Trade Center (2002). Matteo Agnoletto’s GROUNDZERO.EXE. He has also published “Latin American Architecture, 1929-1960: Contemporary Reflexions”, with Monacelli Press, 2004 and recently was included in an exhibition and publication “Beyond The Supersquare: Art and Architecture in Latin America after Modernism”, edited by Antonio Sergio Bessa and published by Fordham University/The Bronx Museum of the Arts New York, 2014.
Watch a recent video of Parkour in the building that was mentioned in the interview, (Hotel Casa Real) that is now abandoned, in Valencia, Spain. The video is below the image of the building further down in the images below.
Learn more on his website by clicking here.
