Alberto Kalach Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Alberto Kalach (born 1960) is a Mexican architect, artist and urbanist based in Mexico City. Co-founder of Taller de Arquitectura X, he is best known for the Vasconcelos Library, whose suspended bookshelves float within a vast concrete hall surrounded by a botanical garden, and for his long-standing proposals to restore the lakes of the Valley of Mexico. His work combines raw concrete, brick and steel with gardens and a painter’s sensitivity to light.

Mexico City, Iberoamericana and Cornell

Kalach was born in Mexico City in 1960. He studied architecture at the Universidad Iberoamericana and continued his studies at Cornell University. In 1981 he co-founded Taller de Arquitectura X (TAX) with Daniel Álvarez, and the studio’s early houses and buildings in Mexico City established its interest in heavy materials, courtyards and vegetation.

The return to the lake city

With Teodoro González de León and others, Kalach developed the project Vuelta a la ciudad lacustre (Return to the Lake City), a long-term vision for recovering the lakes that once surrounded Mexico City as a way to address water shortages, flooding and urban sprawl. Landscape and water have remained central to his work since.

The Vasconcelos Library

The Vasconcelos Library in Mexico City (2006), designed with Juan Palomar, Gustavo Lipkau and Tonatiuh Martínez, is a long concrete and glass building whose interior is filled with steel bookshelves suspended in a multi-level void. A whale skeleton by Gabriel Orozco hangs in the central hall, and the building is wrapped by a public botanical garden.

Galleries, gardens and recent work

Kalach has designed galleries and spaces for artists, including the kurimanzutto gallery in Mexico City (2008), a converted timber warehouse, and the 2023 expansion of Casa Wabi Foundation’s space in Mexico City. He is also a painter and sculptor, and drawing remains at the heart of his design process.