Founded by Pablo Castro and Jennifer Lee in the year 2000 in New York City, Obra Architects is an international architectural design and planning firm working on projects of urban and community impact that create socially sustainable buildings and environments. Its driving force is a diverse team of designers who have converged in the city from all over the world, developing projects of social and cultural relevance in the United States, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and beyond. Obra is committed to searching for the unique opportunity to develop a singular architecture—one that is not dull or insensitive to the needs of people, but rather manages, through sensitive design, to be both intelligent in construction and generous in living potentialities, seeking to realize the maximum potential of human life for those who inhabit them. Work includes housing prototypes, public space initiatives, urban planning, aging-in-place residential projects, educational projects such as schools and kindergartens, experimental installations and museum commissions. Obra is a minority woman-owned business enterprise, supporting local and international community-minded clients and institutional-level initiatives in work and practice, prioritizing diversity, energy and climate responsibility and environmental stewardship. The firm is actively entrepreneurial and operates to try to advance the way architecture impacts communities and environments. At the same time, the work aims to originate from a pragmatism and realism that harnesses local energies and inspired clients and institutions seeking change through architecture, design, and urban planning.
Obra has produced a body of award-winning projects recognized by six American Institute of Architects Awards, two Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Awards, the Kim Swoo Geun Preview Prize Award, and the Architectural League of New York, among others. Winner of the 2006 PS1 MoMA Young Architects Program, Obra has participated for three years (2014, 2016, and 2021) in the Venice Architecture Biennale and two years of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture Urbanism (2017 and 2021), most recently with its Live Projects gift to the people of Seoul, The Kathouse www.kathouse.org. The work of Obra has been exhibited widely, and has been featured at the Museum of Modern Art, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the National Art Museum of China, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, at Rhode Island School of Design, as well as the Frac Centre-Val de Loire in Orléans, CAMPO in Rome, and Architektur Galerie Berlin. The studio’s second monograph entitled “Obra Architects Logic: Selected Projects, 2003 - 2016” was published by Arkitektur B, Copenhagen in 2017, with forthcoming publications in planning next year to be released in Europe and Asia. A recent public space project commissioned by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul, entitled Perpetual Spring or "The Climate-Correcting Machine," can be viewed at www.perpetualspring.org.
