Gracia Studio

Jorge Gracia, main architect of Gracia Studio establishes a culture of design and challenge to the conventions on residential architecture in the Tijuana-San Diego area. His studio is fostering a demand for inexpensive and stylish architecture by focusing on pre-fabrication.

Gracia Studio is based on the technical aspects of building systems that lead to worth living architecture for the users. Due to the need of cost-effective building, their challenge always starts from the construction process for each of their designs. In 2005 Jonathan Bell, architecture editor for Wallpaper Magazine, took special interest in Gracia Studio, and published it as part of the Architects Directory article.

The studio seeks the completion of their projects with everyday items, applied in unusual manners to give added value only credited by wit. An example of their design process is Casa GA, featured in 2005 Anniversary Issue of Dwell Magazine, “Transforming Tijuana”, which is based on research materials produced in the project area, as well as artisans and workers, who perform certain types of labor, besides they support the local industry, create jobs in the same study area and lower costs of material and manpower. Gracia Studio’s design philosophy is using materials that meet the needs of the project completely in a structural form; yet aesthetical and modern at the same time, as project Casa Becerril is shown in Arquine book, The Best of the XXI Century, Mexican Architecture 2007-2008.

Completing numerous lectures in different universities and architectural conferences, such as the Dwell on Design event in 2010, and Virginia Tech Architecture School, Gracia Studio shares its innovative design and building to students and general public throughout the United States and Mexico.

In 2012 Gracia Studio launches the first multidisciplinary School of Practical Architecture in the Tijuana-San Diego area, with workshops where students interact directly with the craftsmen, gathering experience while working in conjunction with local artisans such as blacksmiths, carpenters, upholsterers, and industrial painters, form workers and landscapers, just to mention a few.
Part of the studio’s beliefs is not to compromise design with external factors such as economic concerns, rather take them as an opportunity to exploit and develop creativity and inventiveness in new ways.