Francisco Elías Carrillo
Architect Francisco J. Elías Carrillo was born on December 7th, 1981 in Tepexpan, State of Mexico. He studied in the city of Texcoco to then enter the E.N.P. 9 (National High School #9 for its initials in Spanish) in Mexico City, where he discovered his taste for culture thanks to his classes in Philosophy, History, Art, Science, and Literature instructed by well-known Emeritus professors. In the year 2000 he begins his studies in the Architecture School of UNAM, where he stood out as a student and was part, as a tutor, of Dr. Gerardo Guízar Bermudez’s seminars on History of Architecture. Concluding his professional studies, he was selected amid a group of students to present a real architectural proposal. On September 24th, 2004 he graduated with this built project, the Cultural Center for UNAM in Juriquilla, Queretaro, with three teammates.
It was this same year that he began working for architect Axel Arañó’s office, developing several public buildings for universities, houses, and the Plaza of Humility in the historic center of Mexico City. In 2006 he starts his own office under the name of ELÍAS ARQUITECTURA, based in Mexico City, attending privately and publicly funded projects under the philosophy of creating a platform for thought, analysis, and research, where he collaborates with specialists from different backgrounds that strictly attend the requirements that each project demands. Elías Arquitectura has summed up several projects in a diversity of cities within Mexico, the U.S. (Miami, San Antonio), and France (Paris). Standing out within the architectural production, there are offices for young companies, specialty clinics in the North of Mexico, beach houses on the Mexican Pacific Coast, restaurants, apartments, and collaborations for the development of institutional buildings for science research for UNAM with architect Axel Arañó.
Following his commitment for education, he has equally developed academic work by lecturing architectural design, theory, and history seminars at the School of Architecture of UNAM, the Graduate School of Architecture of the Universidad Anáhuac, CENTRO (School of Design, Film and Television), ITESM campus Mexico City (Monterrey Institute of Technology), as well as being an invited jury for other universities in Mexico. He has collaborated in urban and social investigations and expositions, as is the case of the Citambulos project that he presented at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico, allowing to promote several national bibliographical and hemerographic publications such as Architectural Digest, Arquine, Chilango, Reforma, and El Universal. Recently, Architectural Digest awarded ELÍAS ARQUITECTURA the Iconos del Diseño Prize to the best Opera Prima project for the Cultural Center for UNAM building in Juriquilla, Queretaro. ELÍAS ARQUITECTURA is currently focused on the presentation of the new design hotel in the City of Cuernavaca, where the benefits of the “city of the eternal spring” weather are examined, and new housing developments in the city of Miami.