Xavier vilalta, Founder and Director of Vilalta Studio
Xavier Vilalta is the founder and director of Vilalta Studio, established in 2006 in Barcelona. Over the past twenty years, he has developed an international body of work across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and America, working across architecture, urban regeneration and design.
His work explores how contemporary architecture can respond to global challenges while remaining deeply specific to place. Climate, culture, existing conditions, local knowledge and new construction systems become tools for creating architecture that belongs — to its environment, to the people who use it and to the time in which it is built.
This approach can be seen across projects including Lideta Mercato in Addis Ababa, Flora, Navas 270 and La Tèxtil in Barcelona, and Amura, where adaptive reuse, climate-responsive design and industrialized construction are approached not as isolated technical strategies, but as part of a broader architectural culture.
Vilalta was the first Spanish architect selected as a TED Fellow, in 2011. He has lectured internationally at TEDGlobal, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, World Architecture Day in Brunei and other architecture and urban forums. He also taught final-year architectural design at ETSAB - UPC in Barcelona for six years and studied at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
In 2026, Vilalta Studio marked its twentieth anniversary with Living Patterns, a book and exhibition reflecting on two decades of projects, processes and ideas. Xavier continues to lead the studio from Barcelona while developing projects and collaborations internationally.
