Elisa Silva

Elisa Silva © Courtesy of Elisa Silva

Elisa Silva (b. 1975) is an American-Venezuelan architect based in Caracas, Venezuela. She is the director and founder of Enlace Arquitectura and Enlace Foundation. Elisa works with self-built neighbourhood communities, and leads a collective, art-based movement to re-naturalize the Guaire River in Caracas. She also works with mezcal making communities in rural Oaxaca Mexico to recover degraded soils, through rain water retention, regenerative farming and reforestation. Enlace´s work has been exhibited at the Biennale di Venezia 2021, the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2021, Arc en Rêve centre d’architecture in Bordeaux 2022, the Centro Cultural Parque de España in Rosario Argentina 2022, Miami Art Basel 2022, and awarded at the VII and XI Ibero-American Architecture Biennial BIAU. Elisa is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, the Harvard GSD Wheelwright, Afield and Lucas Artist Fellowships and Graham Foundation Grantee. She is co-author of CABA Cartography of the Caracas Barrios (2015) and Pure Space: expanding the public sphere through public space transformations in Latin-American spontaneous settlements (Actar 2020). She teaches architecture at Florida International University in Miami and Harvard GSD, and previously at Princeton University, University of Toronto, Simón Bolivar University, and Universidad Central de Venezuela.