Director
“Architecture will inevitably be the bridge to the future. We don’t design only for today, but so that humanity can continue to inhabit this world with dignity, sensitivity and awareness.”
Guillermo Yias (Buenos Aires, 1976) is an architect from the University of Buenos Aires and co-founder of Leguía Yias Arquitectos, a studio from which he has developed, over more than three decades, an architectural practice of notable sensitivity, with a strong emphasis on sustainability, technical precision and ethical reflection on contemporary living.
His technical training began at the Luis A. Huergo Institute, where he gained an early understanding of construction logic and of design as a tool for intelligent problem-solving. Later, at the School of Architecture, Design and Urbanism of the UBA, he trained as a disciple of three key figures of Argentine design thinking: Juan Molina y Vedia, Alberto Varas and Javier Sánchez Gómez. Between 2000 and 2007, he taught Architectural Design, Urban Design and Urban Planning at the UBA, an experience that consolidated his critical thinking around architecture and territory.
Before founding his own studio, he was part of teams at some of the most renowned studios in Argentina, taking part in projects of great programmatic complexity and in numerous ideas competitions. That path strengthened his integral vision of the architectural process and his ability to think from the urban scale to the construction detail.
Between 2000 and 2017, his professional career expanded into other languages: graphic design, digital development, social advertising and visual art. He founded the studio Zumoideas+, where he directed branding and digital design projects for global brands such as Nike, Coca-Cola, Latam Airlines, Rexona, Gatorade, Pepsi and Aeropuertos Argentina 2000. Later, he co-founded Chaxcha.com, a digital agency focused on campaigns for NGOs such as Greenpeace International, UNICEF, the United Nations, Médecins Sans Frontières, WWF and Amnesty International. He also worked as audiovisual art director between 2017 and 2020, gaining an integral command of filmic language and visual narrative.
These interdisciplinary experiences —combining art, technology, design and communication— are not parallel paths, but layers that have deeply nourished his architectural approach. His training as a designer, programmer, visual artist and musician allows him to approach each project from a perspective that is, at the same time, sensitive, conceptual and technically rigorous.
Today, Yias devotes all his efforts to his architecture studio, from which he drives projects that integrate the social, environmental and aesthetic dimensions of design. In his vision, architecture is not only a response to the present, but a critical tool for imagining the ways of life of the future.
That outlook deepens in his new editorial project, where he explores, through architecture, the great challenges humanity will face in the coming decades: the climate crisis, the transformation of cities, the impact of technology, and the changes in housing, work and mobility. He argues that the future should not be thought of through fear or determinism, but as an invitation to imagine new ways of inhabiting the world with dignity, awareness and flexibility. His thinking combines a deep humanist sensitivity with a lucid and critical reading of the present.