Alejandro Echeverri Restrepo

Urbam

Alejandro Echeverri is an internationally acclaimed architect and planner from Medellín, Colombia. He is the cofounder and director of Urbam, the Center for Urban and Environmental Studies at EAFIT University in Medellin. His experience combines architectural, urban, environmental projects and planning. He also has served as a professor, lecturer and juror at various international and national architectural institutions.

Mr. Echeverri’s work has earned him numerous awards, including the National Urban Planning Award in 2008, the Curry Stone Design Prize in 2009 and the 10th Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design from Harvard. As Medellin’s director of urban projects from 2005 to 2008, he led the conceptualization and implementation of “social urbanism,” which has played crucial role in the rejuvenation of Medellín. With the support and partnership of the city’s mayor, Mr. Echeverri initiated construction of a series of visually striking libraries, schools, parks, and community centers in Medellín’s most impoverished areas. He also established public works programs that included connecting some of Medellín’s poorest and most isolated neighborhoods to the rest of the city. Because of these efforts and Mr. Echeverri’s belief in the power of design, Medellín is now considered a blueprint for the future of other cities in the developing world.