Fran Silvestre Arquitectos

Fran Silvestre is a Doctor of Architecture, graduated with honors from the UPV, and received the same distinction in his urban planning degree from TU/e in the Netherlands. He holds a Magna Cum Laude doctorate in design from UPV. Currently, he is a professor in the Department of Projects at UPV and the European University, and leads the MArch Postgraduate School in Architecture and Design. In 2011, he was the vice- director of the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Valencia, and in 2018, he obtained the Victor L. Regnier Chair at KSU in the United States. Throughout his career, he trained with the Portuguese Pritzker Prize winner Álvaro Siza. He is the great-grandson of Valentín Silvestre Fombuena, who, according to the number of patents from the OEPM, was the most prolific inventor in the second half of the 19th century. His studio, Fran Silvestre Arquitectos, was founded in 2005. Based in Valencia, it operates in the former workshop of sculptor Andreu Alfaro, a 7000 m2 space where a multidisciplinary team of over 50 professionals works on residential, cultural, corporate, and public projects worldwide. He has received awards such as the 2001 Caja de Arquitectos Foundation Prize, the 2010 COACV Architects’ Association Prize. In 2012, he was chosen by the Ministry of Culture and Sport as the ambassador of Spanish Architecture in the United States with the Spain Arts and Culture program. He won the Red Dot Design Award in 2013, the same year he received the Best Architect of the Valencian Community award at IVAM Modern Art Institute. In 2015, he won the Build Architectural Award in the United Kingdom. The Superior Council of Architects of Spain awarded him the first prize of the XIII Biennial of 2016 in the design category. That same year, he won the NYCxDESIGN award in New York. He has been awarded four times by the German Ministry of Economy and Technology in 2016, 2020, 2021, and 2024 with the German Design Award. In 2018, he was selected for the FAD awards, and in 2021, he won the IF Design Award. In 2022, the International Federation of Architects and Designers awarded him the First Prize with the gold medal in the Architecture category.

Additionally, he has been invited to present his work at numerous seminars and conferences at international universities and institutions, such as KSU, AIA New York, or Virginia Tech. He has also exhibited in various museums, like the Museu Serralves in Porto within the inovdesign framework, or MoMA through the On-Site exhibition. His work has been published in magazines like Architectural Record, GA houses, On-diseño, or Interni. It has also been featured in publishers like Phaidon, Taschen, Thames & Hudson, or GG. Various monographs have been published about the studio’s work, such as those by TC cuadernos, A.Mag, or Arianuova. Recently, the New York publisher Rizzoli, with the prestigious critic Philip Jodidio, released a monograph about the studio’s work.

The studio’s projects are scattered worldwide, in places such as China, the United States, Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, Croatia, Italy, Australia, and Spain. Throughout its trajectory, the studio has worked on projects of various scales. Noteworthy projects include the Cliff House (Alicante, Spain), the Balint House (Valencia, Spain), the House in Hollywood Hills (Los Angeles, USA), the Zibo master plan (Zibo, China), the Boutique Hotel (Vis, Croatia), and the Eolic Tower (Valencia, Spain).

The studio’s architecture is heavily influenced by the works of Álvaro Siza and Andreu Alfaro. As critic David Cohn says, “Fran Silvestre is not an essentialist seeking a lost and rooted authenticity, nor is he tuned to the divine harmonies of perfect geometric form under the light. His art, despite its abstraction, deals more with the matter at hand, and how to create an environment for everyday life that elevates us out of the ordinary, into a more complete and awakened sensual engagement with our surroundings.”