The MAK Center for Art and Architecture and the SOM Foundation are pleased to announce that Pablo Castillo Luna has been awarded the 2025 Researcher-in-Residence.
Pablo Castillo Luna is a Canary Islands–born architect and educator who teaches at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. Castillo Luna will receive a $5,000 stipend and a six-week summer residency in Los Angeles in the live/work space at the MAK Center’s Fitzpatrick-Leland House designed by R. M. Schindler (1936) for work related to his research proposal, “A Permeable Atlas.”
Through a series of mappings, “A Permeable Atlas” will explore the circulations of water through buildings, landscapes, and bodies, tracing how hydrological infrastructures—past and present—might inform architecture’s response to contemporary climatic instability.
“Receiving the 2025 Researcher-in-Residence award by the SOM Foundation and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture represents a significant milestone in my work, affirming the importance of understanding and embracing change within architectural practice through the lens of water,” states Castillo Luna. “Rather than proposing mechanisms to control it, this research proposes learning from processes of leaking, seeping, and absorbing to engage with increasingly unstable conditions. I’m grateful to the SOM Foundation and the MAK Center for their support and recognition, underscoring water’s vital role in shaping the future built environment.”
“The Researcher-in-Residence program, started last year by the SOM Foundation and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, provides a unique framework to research key aspects of our built environment. Last year, this joint effort allowed Maya Livio to develop her work at the historic Fitzpatrick-Leland House and we look forward to seeing the ideas and work that Pablo Castillo Luna explores,” said Iker Gil, executive director of the SOM Foundation.
“We’re honored to welcome Pablo Castillo Luna as the 2025 Researcher-in-Residence. His project exemplifies the kind of forward-thinking, materially grounded inquiry that the MAK Center and the SOM Foundation are committed to supporting through this initiative. By examining how water moves through our environments and lives, Castillo Luna’s research foregrounds connections between infrastructure and lived experience—offering pathways for more responsive, community-centered approaches to design,” said Beth Stryker, director and curator of the MAK Center.
About Pablo Castillo Luna
Pablo Castillo Luna holds an MArch from Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he graduated with distinction and received the Architecture Faculty Design Award. He received a diploma in architecture from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. His work has been exhibited at the Harvard Arts FIRST Festival (Cambridge, 2023) and the Center for Architecture (New York, 2022) and published in Pidgin, Paprika!, and L’Atelier. Prior to Cornell University, he taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and Wentworth Institute of Technology. As cofounder of à la sauvette, an architecture practice dedicated to design, research, and cultural production, Castillo Luna has led award-winning projects honored by the Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2023) and the Future Architecture Platform (2020). à la sauvette’s work has been showcased at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale (2022), Driving the Human Festival in Berlin (2019), and The Movement Forum in London, Paris, and Lisbon (2019).
About “A Permeable Atlas”
“A Permeable Atlas” engages in a research-based material and spatial study that makes visible the hidden circulations of water within architecture. The outcome will be a collection of drawings, maps, and prototypes documenting how water moves through buildings, landscapes, and bodies. This atlas will trace the relationships between historical water-harvesting techniques, contemporary infrastructural failures, and speculative architectural responses that embrace rather than resist water’s agency. It will serve as both a research archive and a design toolkit, offering strategies for working with seepage, condensation, and controlled dissolution as design tools rather than failures. At the culmination of the residency, Castillo Luna will present a public talk and a panel discussion to present the research, framing leakage, permeability, and water’s agency in architecture as central concerns in a time of climatic uncertainty.
For more information about “A Permeable Atlas,” visit: https://somfoundation.
About the Researcher-in-Residence Program
Proudly presented as a joint endeavor between the SOM Foundation and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, the Researcher-in-Residence is a fully funded residency program provides an architect, artist, and/or researcher dedicated space and time for innovative work that addresses pressing issues related to the built environment.
Each year, the call for applications features an annual research topic. This year’s topic is “Advancing Toward a Water-Secure Future,” which corresponds to the SOM Foundation’s 2024–25 research topic.
Residency recipients are encouraged to participate in the activities of the MAK Center and engage with the larger art, architecture, and design communities of Los Angeles. Each residency will culminate with a public talk or program related to the recipient’s research and interests.
This program is the newest addition to the MAK Center’s illustrious history of hosting residencies, including the Urban Futures Initiative (2008–2011) and the Mackey Artist-and-Architects Residency. To date, the MAK Center has hosted 50+ groups of international residents in the Mackey Artist and Architects in Residence Program.
The Researcher-in-Residence program also reflects the SOM Foundation’s 40+ year commitment to providing research support to innovative architects and designers as they shape the future of the built environment.
For more details about the Researcher-in-Residence award, please visit: https://somfoundation.
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