Ana María Durán Calisto is an Ecuadorian architect, scholar, and urban-environmental planner whose work explores the intersection of ecology, architecture, art, infrastructure and urbanization. She is a member of the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA), a Public Voices fellow (Yale cohort 2024), and the recipient of the 2022 Mark Cousins Theory Award for her work on extractivism, post-extractivism, urbanism, architecture, regeneration and urban agroecologies—past and present—in the Amazon and beyond. Her dissertation on Exogenous and Endogenous Systems of Planning in Upper Amazonia: Possible Futures co-won the 2026 IPHS PhD Anthony Sutcliffe Dissertation Prize. As a Loeb Fellow at Harvard GSD (2011), she conceived and co-founded the South America Project. She has been advisor to the Ecuadorian Minister on Housing and Urban Development for the UN Conference Habitat III; a consultant for CAF’s program on BiodiverCities and for IDB´s BioCities and Amazonia Forever programs. She has taught research seminars and design studios at Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Harvard GSD, UCLA, Pratt, University of Michigan, Iaac, Universidad Católica de Temuco, USFQ, UDLA, UIDE, and UTE.

In 2002, she co-founded Studio A0 with British-Punjabi architect Jaskran Kalirai. The award-winning studio has designed a diverse array of multi-scalar projects in close collaboration with clients and community partners. The consortium SANAA + Estudio A0 - Caá Porá - JH Studio won the international competition for the National Museum of Ecuador (2026). In collaboration with Del Hierro AU and L + A Arquitectos, the studio won the competition for the Ikiam University campus, whose design was awarded First Prize in the SDSN Amazonia Infrastructure Award, COP 21, in Paris. Its design for the American School of Quito, co-authored with Todd Williams and Billie Tsien Architects, was one of seven finalists (out of 120 initial participants). Its building QPH was ranked 8th among the 500 best socio-environmental projects in Latin America at the 2015 Latin American Green Awards. Its incremental housing scheme received Second Prize in a Social Housing Competition sponsored by UN Habitat. More recently, the studio has won competitions to design Teleamazonas TV station (halted by the pandemic); a mixed-use residential complex focused on socioenvironmental well-being; a residential high-rise in Quito; and three commercial plaza centers in urban and rural areas of Ecuador.

Estudio A0’s exhibition “Surfacing - The Civilised Agroecological Forests of Amazonia,” co-created with the Waorani collective Omere, was featured in the 2023 Venice Biennale. A new co-produced iteration of it will be exhibited in a83 gallery in New York, thanks to a Graham Foundation grant, and will be presented at the Centro Cultural Metropolitano of Quito. The studio´s research and design projects have also been showcased in Post-Extractivist Imaginaries (2025 Venice Biennale); the XX Chilean Architecture and Urbanism Biennale (2017); the National Museum of Ecuador (2025); the Art Gallery of Alberta (2022, 2020), Quito´s CCM (2019), Arte Actual (FLACSO 2011), the Pratt Institute (2012), CCEba (2010) and the Museum of Modern Art of Medellín (2010).

Durán Calisto has authored the studio report The Future of Oil Boom Towns in Amazonia (GSD, 2026), and co-edited the books Ecological Urbanism in Latin America (Editorial GG, 2019), Beyond Petropolis: Designing a Practical Utopia in Nueva Loja (ORO Publishers, 2015), and Taller Internacional de Vivienda Popular (PUCE 2007). She has contributed chapters to several books, including Urban Futures: Citizen Engagement, Mobility, and Sustainable Design (Springer Nature 2026); Adaptive Reuse in Latin America. Cultural Identity, Values and Memory (Routledge 2024); Charter Toward re-entanglement: A Charter for the City and the Earth (Bauhaus Earth 2024); Roadside Picnics (dpr 2022); Reconstructing the Future: Cities as Carbon Sinks (Birkhauser 2023); Beyond the Supersquare: Art & Architecture in Latin America After Modernism (Fordham University Press & The Bronx Museum of the Arts 2014); and Thinking Practice: Reflections on Architectural Research and Building Work (Black Dog Publishing 2007). Durán Calisto contributes papers, policy briefs and articles to magazines such as The Architectural Review, AULA, Casabella, CCA digital magazine, Deco journal, Domus, E-flux Architecture, GAM, gta papers, Harvard Design Magazine, Manifest, NESS, Revista PANGEA, Revista Plot, Revista Radar, Revista Vitruvia, Rivista Territorio, Rita, Revista 30-60 Cuaderno Latinoamericano de Arquitectura, and TRAMA. She co-authored SPA’s 2021 Report’s chapter on urbanization and its policy brief on the challenges posed by infrastructure in the Amazon. She was lead author of SPA´s policy brief on sustainable cities and towns in Amazonia.

In 2006 she was the Executive Secretary and curator of the XV Quito Pan-American Architecture Biennial: Visible Cities. She was the national curator for BIAU 2014 and the Andean Curator for the Rogelio Salmona Foundation in 2016. She has been a member of diverse editorial boards and scientific committees. She also participates as a juror in competitions such as the Architecture Hunter Awards 2026; the 2026 Landscape Architecture Latin American Biennale; Dezeen Awards 2025; and BIAU 2024.

Durán Calisto lectures extensively in multidisciplinary venues worldwide.