Esteban de Backer

Esteban de Backer is a co-founding principal of AtO_Office and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP. He graduated as an Architect with honors from Barcelona ́s School of Architecture, after completing a degree in Environmental Sciences. In 2008, he was awarded the Arquia Foundation fellowship, starting his professional collaboration with No.mad Architects in Madrid, where he managed different projects worldwide, such as the WU Executive Academy in Wien. In 2013, Esteban was awarded “La Caixa Foundation” fellowship, under which he received his post-professional Master in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia GSAPP in 2014. He worked as an independent researcher under the ARPA program in 2015 at GSAPP, conducting the on-going investigation Another Efficiency in which he explored the limits and possibilities of the notion of pragmatism in architectural production. He has taught both at Barnard and Columbia GSAPP since 2013, and has been an invited juror at GSAPP, Pratt, NJIT, NYIT, and Barnard.

AtO_Office is an international practice of Architecture based in New York and Barcelona. Its work has been published or exhibited at BEAU (Spanish Architecture Biennale), The Architectural League of NY, and Arquia Proxima. AtO through essential architectural definitions understands Architecture as a cultural practice that through the definition of objects, and most importantly their performance, is able to construct the social.