Ana María Durán Calisto

Ana María Durán Calisto is a designer, planner, and scholar from Quito, Ecuador. In 2002, she co-founded Estudio A0 with her husband, British-Punjabi architect Jaskran Kalirai. Estudio A0 has designed a diverse array of multi-scalar projects in close collaboration with its clients and community partners. Its building QPH obtained the first LEED Gold certification of continental Ecuador and was ranked 8th among the 500 best socio-environmental projects in Latin America at the 2015 Latin American Green Awards. Estudio A0’s projects have been extensively published. Recent features include Arquitectura XXI (Editorial Trama 2022). The studio’s work has been featured in the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale The Laboratory of the Future (2023), the XX Chilean Architecture and Urbanism Biennial: Diálogos Impostergables (2017), and others.

Durán Calisto has taught research seminars and design studios at institutions including FADA of Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Harvard University’s GSD, Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture, and Columbia University’s GSAPP.

In 2022, Durán Calisto received the Mark Cousins Theory Award for her work on extractivism and the built environment and her interest in the principles of ancestral urban ecologies. She has co-edited and contributed chapters to numerous books. Durán Calisto has lectured extensively and actively publishes in magazines as well.

Durán Calisto collaborates with CAF’s program on BiodiverCities and with the IDB on its BioCities program for Brazil. She is a PhD candidate in the urban planning department at UCLA, writing a dissertation on the urban history of Amazonia, with a focus on indigenous systems of territorial planning and colonial disruptions.

Durán Calisto curated the XV Quito Architecture Biennial: Visible Cities (2006) and was National Curator for the IX BIAU. Her exhibition-essay “Water Builds” was showcased in the Art Gallery of Alberta (2022). She contributed a piece on the indigenous communes of Quito to the exhibition Dinámicas urbanas de Quito 1978 – 2018 (CCM 2019) and the art installation Horizonte to La Escala Prevalece (Arte Actual, 2011).