Design Principal | Salazar Architects
Alex oversees firm management and design and has decades of experience leading multifamily developments and community-based master plans. His career-long focus linking architecture to community organizing continues to shape the firm's body of work. Upon completing a Bachelor of Architecture at Cal Poly, San Louis Obispo (1993), Alex was honored with a Graham Foundation Fellowship and apprenticed with NGOs in India designing culturally appropriate, earthquake safe homes. After working a few years, he returned to academia and completed a Master of Science in Architecture from UC Berkeley (1998), focusing on homelessness in the US and post-disaster housing in developing nations. By the early 2000s Alex served on the Board of Directors of multiple housing justice organizations, including East Bay Housing Organizations (Oakland, CA), Just Cause Oakland (aka CJJC in Oakland, CA), and the Association for Community Design (Boston, MA). Today he can be found volunteering with the AIA, NOMA and DAP, and occasionally teaching community design studios at Portland State University.
Courses
Working Across Housing Typologies
Architects, whether working with a private client on a custom, single family residence or with developers on multi-family projects, face many similar challenges. The costs of land, labor and materials overlaid with regulations does not often pencil out, resulting in a lack of mid-priced and mid-scaled housing. However, more and more architects are striving to create a variety of housing opportunities including multi-family, workforce development and missing middle housing to complement their portfolios of affordable and market rate-housing.
Join us for this session to learn about innovative models of practice and projects that are diversifying the housing market, what single-family and multi-family housing can learn from each other, and how firms are structuring their practices to tackle an array of housing typologies and mission-driven work.
Hosted by CRAN®. This session was recorded live on December 15, 2021.
Course expires 12/18/2024