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Architect Alberto Kalach (Mexico City, 1960) says that his vocation was clear from a very young age, when his father gave him an encyclopedia: as he flipped through the first volume he came across letter “A” for “architecture”; the word, illustrated with a photo of Fallingwater —a work by architect Frank Lloyd Wright—, was an epiphany that marked his destiny.

Kalach defines architecture as “the construction that surrounds us, made with art”. He studied at the Universidad Iberoamericana and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His name has become a reference whose work is distinguished by his interest in creating beautiful, functional and sustainable buildings such as Faro de Oriente, the José Vasconcelos Library or the Reforma 27 tower. He is specially inclined to urbanism in Mexico City.

He has received numerous international awards, such as the first place in the Petrosino Park International Design Competition in New York (1996) —in collaboration with Ricardo Regazzoni and Julio González Rojas. He founded the collective Mexico: Future City, which has developed ideas on a large scale together with architects including Teodoro González de León, Jose Castillo and Gustavo Lipkau. His Mexico, Lakeside City project represents the most important contribution of the last decades by Mexican architects.