Alejandro Aravena graduated as an architect from the Universidad Católica de Chile in 1992. Between 2000 and 2005, he was a professor at Harvard University where ELEMENTAL originated. ELEMENTAL is a Do Tank founded in 2001, led by Alejandro Aravena with partners Gonzalo Arteaga, Juan Cerda, Victor Oddó and Diego Torres.
In 2010, he was named an Honorary International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Since 2011, he has been a member of the Council of the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics (LSE). In 2014, he gave a TED Global Talk. The work of Aravena and ELEMENTAL has been recognised with—among other awards—the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2008 and the Gothenburg Award for sustainability in 2017. In 2016, Aravena was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Since 2020, he has been President of the jury for the same award.