SALAA is a non-profit organization that operates as a platform-outlet for exploration and debate on architecture's world-making possibilities.

SALAA seeks to engage in the most pressing and urgent conditions that have shaped the notions of Latin America; mostly built and imposed under same-centric ideologies.

SALAA is physically located at ground-zero of the global-north and global-south where violent frictions of our catastrophic times are crudely manifested and at the same time delineate unforeseen possibilities of opportunities for cities and architecture to come.

Rudy
Director / Founder

Alex
Program Director / Co-Founder

Shantal
Management / Co-founder

Denisse
Research Director / Co-founder

Christian
Business Development / Co-founder

Rudy
Director / Founder

Rudy Argote is an architect born in Tijuana, Mexico (1987). Currently director at RA+ architects and director at Plankton - Ocean Plastic Upcycle. Studied architecture at Universidad Iberoamericana del Noroeste, currently studying a masters degree in city planning at the same university. 

2010-2014 Worked at the Torolab collective as designer participating in exhibitions at Bienal do Mercosul, Living as Form (The Nomadic Version) at UCSD, ARTESANS. Construccions col·lectives de l'espai social at La Capella, Barcelona, Residual at Museo del Estanquillo, CDMX. 2015 Co-Director at Bordofarms, project created to help the community of deportees in Tijuana. 2016-2019 Co-founder and Design Director at Centro Ventures a development firm focused on adaptive reuse projects. 2018 co-curator of the Weltstadt exhibition that took place in Tijuana and San Diego simultaneously, sponsored by the Goethe Institut. Currently collaborating with the Planning Institute of Tijuana on an urban loop project for pedestrians and cyclists connecting the city’s downtown main neighborhoods with the San Ysidro International Border.

Alex
Program Director / Co-Founder

Alejandro Santander Principal of estudio santander. The office practices architecture, urbanism, and design as it seeks to identify possibilities of strategies towards speculative realities.

Director of TIOC. A think tank that focuses on possible logics of governance through temporary infrastructures of commitments and the real-time negotiations that organize the resultant temporary morphology of architecture-city. Areas of research include posthuman conditions, alternative logics of coevolution, and the construction of xeno onto-political realities.

Alejandro has been recognized with regional, national, and international awards, he has participated in exhibitions and biennales in the United States, Mexico, Europe, and Asia. Several international competition entries have been shortlisted as _nalists. Recently he has participated in the Malaysia Biennial 100YC Medini 2017, 2017 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Venice Biennale of Architecture 2018, an exhibition by Weltstadt San Diego-Tijuana sponsored by The Goethe Institute, San Diego: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, and most recently, in the Italian Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale 2021.

Shantal
Management / Co-founder

Shantal N. Rodriguez is a student of Architecture at  Universidad Iberoamericana Cdmx-Tijuana.
In 2018, she concluded an academic exchange based on architecture and urbanism at the Catholic University of Cordoba, Argentina.

She is part of the think tank TIOC (Temporary Infrastructure of Commitments), where she has participated of various international presentations such as the Malaysia 100 YC Medini Biennial in 2017, the 2018 Venice Biennale, the Weltstadt exhibition in San Diego by the Goethe Institute in 2018 and the Venice Biennale 2021.

Shantal is co-founder and director of pacifico.51, a company focused on accommodation services and real estate administration in Tijuana.

Denisse
Research Director / Co-founder

Denise Luna Acevedo is an architect, researcher, and professor from Mexico. 

She studied architecture at Universidad Iberoamericana CDMX-Tijuana. She was a researcher in the program “The New Normal” iteration 2018 at Strelka Institute, where she collaborated in research and design projects for cities, exploring the impact of emerging technologies on new types of interdisciplinary design practices. She is recipient of the full Certificate Scholarship for the Post-Planetary Universal Design Program at The New Centre for Research & Practice. 

Partner of estudio santander; co-director of TIOC Think Tank (Temporary Infrastructure of Commitments); recently authored “Dispositivos de Adhesión: Diseños que diseñan” in the book “Repensar los diseños” from UABC. Her work intends to seek alternative forms of architecture practices and explore the possibilities of diverse techniques (analogous, computational) through thinking and practice at a planetary scale, especially from a Latin American context.

Christian
Business Development Director

Christian Pineda is an architect and entrepreneur based in New York City since 2010. He was born in San Diego, CA in 1986 and grew up between San Diego and Tijuana having family on both sides of the border. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the NewSchool of Architecture & Design and holds a Master of Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP).

In 2012, after years of working in architecture, he opened up a Tijuana-style taquería in New York City, LOS TACOS No.1, arguably the best and most successful tacos in NYC. He currently has six restaurants throughout Manhattan, and is set to open two more in 2022.Most recently, Christian joined the Board of Directors at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York and also sits on the Advisory Board of Sporting ID 11, a 3rd division professional soccer team located in Orange County.

Board of Advisors

Regina Velasco
René Peralta
Enrique Jiménez (Ejival)
Roger Lewis

Raúl Cárdenas Osuna
Rodolfo Argote Gutiérrez
Alex Ruiz
Alfredo Reynoso

TOP