Elisa Silva

Elisa Silva is the director and founder of Enlace Arquitectura, (est. 2007) a multidisciplinary professional practice in architecture, urban design and landscape architecture, and Enlace Foundation (est. 2017), an NGO that promotes environmental, cultural and educational programs of social inclusion and participatory design collaborations. Enlace’s work has been recognized in numerous design competitions, exhibitions and international biennials including the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize 2022, the Biennale di Venezia 2021, the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2021, Arc en Rêve centre d’architecture in Bordeaux 2022, Centro Cultural Parque de España in Rosario Argentina 2022, Miami Art Basel FIU Gallery 2022, the XI and VIII Ibero American Architecture and Urban Design Biennial and the XX Architecture Biennial in Chile.

Elisa is an American-Venezuelan architect, with a Master of Architecture from Harvard GSD. Her practice and research challenge prejudiced narratives that support spatial inequality and engage communities in establishing long-term independent, local associations to sustain improvements in their livelihood and environment through collaborative programs. Communities include the barrio La Palomera and the Guaire River in Caracas Venezuela, rural villages in Oaxaca Mexico and Little Haiti in Miami Florida. These efforts have been supported by grants from the Swiss, French and US Embassies in Venezuela, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Harvard University David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Roma Burgau Germany, the Mellon Foundation and private donations. Elisa is the author of seminal publications on barrios and public space including CABA Cartography of the Caracas Barrios (FE 2015) and Pure Space: expanding the public sphere through public space transformations in Latin-American spontaneous settlements (Actar 2020). Her writings have also been published by Park Books, Birkhäuser, Actar, Arquine, Metropolis Magazine, Azure, Brooklyn Rail, Rassegna di Architettura e Urbanistica, NESS.doc, forA on the Urban, Manifest Journal and Venezuelan journals. Elisa has received the Rome Prize from the American Academy, the Wheelwright Fellowship from Harvard, Graham Foundation Grants in 2017 and 2021 and the Lucas Artist Fellowship. She is Associate Professor at Florida International University FIU with a joint appointment at the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab and the Department of Architecture. She has also taught at Harvard GSD, Princeton University School of Architecture, the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Design at the University of Toronto, the Simón Bolívar University and the Central University in Venezuela.