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Sergio Lopez-Pineiro

Sergio Lopez-Pineiro

  • Assistant Professor, Architecture

Education

  • MArch II, Princeton University, School of Architecture
  • Architect, E.T.S. Architecture, Technical University of Madrid, Spain

Biography

Sergio Lopez-Pineiro is an interdisciplinary architect who imagines spaces where groups of strangers become a public body. Currently, he is focusing on the spatial needs and expressions of democratic acts that generate trust between strangers, such as voting and civil dialogue.

Lopez-Pineiro’s work focuses on the spatial dimensions of the public realm. In contemporary societies where the perception of socio-cultural unity is valued and perpetuated in nostalgic and forceful ways, incongruity and plurality are, in fact, the norm, not the exception. In this context, Lopez-Pineiro examines the role that space plays in the establishment of plural communities characterized by their ability to continually engender, accept, and withstand diverse publics. His work analyzes and proposes theoretical frameworks and design techniques that utilize voids and allied spatial concepts (e.g., emptiness or limbo) to envision spaces where groups of strangers can form a genuine public body.

Lopez-Pineiro is the author of A Glossary of Urban Voids (Jovis, 2020) and Typologies for Big Words (ORO Editions, 2022). A Glossary of Urban Voids is a critiqued glossary of terms regularly used to name the urban void, from the “terrain vague” to the “buffer zone.” Using the glossary as a theoretical tool, this book presents the most relevant questions on the urban void and its potential role as public space. Typologies for Big Words is a collection of projects redesigning traditional building and landscape types as openings within the global system. Architecture’s original function is the provision of interiority, an enclosed area delimited from its context and made available for a narrowly defined public, function, and meaning. In response to this condition, the book proposes a collection of projects as new types of inclusive spaces emerging as holes within society’s big words.

Lopez-Pineiro is the director of Holes of Matter, a design studio in architecture and landscape architecture, and an assistant professor at the School of Architecture & Urban Planning (SARUP) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he teaches design studios and theory seminars on architecture and landscape with a focus on the public nature of the built environment. He has previously held the 2006-07 Reyner Banham Fellowship at the University at Buffalo and the 2014-15 Daniel Urban Kiley Fellowship at Harvard University.

Lopez-Pineiro is a licensed architect in Spain. He trained at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) and received his Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University, where he was awarded the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Prize.

Links

Recent Work

Open book spread with dense academic text and footnotes, discussing terrain vague, wastelands, and urban theory in a two-column layout.
A spread from the book A Glossary of Urban Voids by Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, showing different definitions for the term “terrain vague.”
Low, irregularly shaped white table with blue legs, featuring a textured circular center, set on wood flooring against a yellow wall.
“A Table for Civil Dialogue” is installed at the UWM Student Union and was conceived and designed to hold civil dialogues between six people.
Top-down diagram of a circular table surrounded by varied seating and mobility devices, showing inclusive seating arrangements around a shared central space.
“A Table for Civil Dialogue” brings interlocutors together by shortening the distance and clearing the space between them.
Two side-by-side workstation sections showing a standing user outline interacting with small objects, screens, and tools within a compact elevated desk enclosure.
“Ballot Totem” is a proposal for the Tokyo Biennale 2020, consisting of a design for a voting booth where voters would sense other citizens at the moment of enacting the democratic process.
Concrete pavilion with steep folded roof and cave-like opening, shown front-on against a blank background with a rough, textured ground plane.
“Face-to-Face Encounters” is an ongoing design research project for the design of spaces for civil dialogue.
Two-page architectural spread showing entry elevations above diagrammatic plans with layered black-and-white lines illustrating structure and circulation flows
A spread from the book Typologies for Big Words by Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, showing one of the included projects, “Waiting Room of Democracy.”
The lecture “The Education of the Democratic Citizen” was delivered by Sergio Lopez-Pineiro at the Technical University of Madrid on May 13, 2025. (In Spanish)
Interview conducted by Jovis on the publication of A Glossary of Urban Voids by Sergio Lopez-Pineiro.

Articles & Selected Papers

  • Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. "What Democracy Needs: Spaces for Public Discourse." Wisconsin Architect (2024), pp. 57-58.
  • Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. "Two Models of Public Space." Urban Infill, no. 8 (2020), pp. 52-57.
  • Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. "Uncanny Limbo: A New Type of Architectural Type." Harvard Design Magazine, no. 47 (Spring / Summer 2019), pp. 65-70.
  • Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. "Things as Holes: Voids within Patterns." a+t, no. 46 (Autumn 2015), pp. 92-103. (In Spanish and English)

Artistic Exhibitions & Artwork

Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. One Typology for a Big Word: Waiting Room of Democracy. April 19 – 25, 2021, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge.

Books

  • Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. Typologies for Big Words, ORO Editions, 2022.
  • Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. A Glossary of Urban Voids, Jovis, 2020.

Built Works

Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. Olmsted's Blank Snow. 2011, Front Park, Buffalo.

Chapters

  • Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. "What is the Color of the Wildfire Orange Sky? An Outline for an Aesthetic Sensibility under Climate Change." Pedagogical Experiments in Architecture for a Changing Climate, edited by Tulay Atak, Luis Callejas, Jonathan Scelsa, and Jorgen Tandberg, Routledge, 2023, pp. 31-43.
  • Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. "On the Precarity of the Impasse." Urban Interstices in Italy: Design Experiences, edited by Imma Forino and Bertrando Bonfantini, Siracusa, 2021, pp. 9-18.
  • Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. "Pre-occupations: Building Foundations as Interchronic Landscapes." Waste Matters: Adaptive Reuse for Productive Landscapes, edited by Nikole Bouchard, Routledge, 2020, pp. 126-137.
  • Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. "Scratch That!" Staging Urban Landscapes: The Activation and Curation of Flexible Public Spaces, edited by Cannon Ivers, Birkhäuser, 2018, pp. 66-71.

Grants/Funded Research

2010 Independent Projects Grant (Architecture, Planning and Design Program), New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA): "Olmsted’s Blank Snow." PI: Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio. $10,613 funded.

Notable

  • MacDowell Residency (August 2023): "Assembly Spaces for Democracy." Artist: Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio.
  • MacDowell Residency (February – April 2012): "Pavilion Design." Artist: Lopez-Pineiro, Sergio.