Bio

Ivan Bernal currently lives in Los Angeles working as full time faculty at Southern California Institute of Architecture(SCI-Arc), where he teaches Graduate Level Studios, Visual studies and serves as Graduate Thesis Advisor.
He holds a bachelor’s degree from Florida International University and a Master’s Degree from Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) Where he graduated with honors and the recognition of “Best Thesis”  for his exploration of the relationship between primitive shapes and familiarity.
Prior to his Master’s Degree, Ivan worked as the Lead designer for two Miami based offices collaborating in a variety of projects from competitions, schematic design, documentation to construction administration. In 2012 He joined the recognized office Xefirotarch as the firm’s Lead designer,where he has helped developed a wide range of projects at different scales  from product design,buildings to master plans. His experience includes the development of commercial, cultural and residential buildings in the United States, Asia, South America and Europe.
Ivan has served as visiting Faculty at YALE school of architecture, as well as  teaching  advanced workshops at Knowlton School of Architecture Ohio State University, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, and Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IACC), in Barcelona. He has participated as jury and critic in different reviews including University of Southern California(USC), Florida International University (FIU),University of California (UCLA), Yale school of Architecture, and Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). His work has been published extensively in blogs, books and magazines including Miami Herald, Studio Plex, Fresh Punches, File Magazine, among others. Ivan’s work and research has been exhibited in numerous galleries such as the UNICEF Next Gen in Venice, CA, Noirscapes, A+D Museum in Los Angeles, Barcelona’s rethinking cities “ my very own city”, Land of Tomorrow Fresh Punches, Lexington Kentucky, And StoreFront for Art and Architecture, New York.
In 2011, Ivan was selected to be part of Wallpaper Magazine Graduate Directory, which features only the best graduate architects worldwide. Later in 2012 he won first prize for the Land of Tomorrow competition where a full scale prototype of this entry was fabricated and exhibited in the LoT gallery in Kentucky.
Ivan is committed to advanced architectural and computational design to generate experimental and innovative environments and methods of representation to constantly challenge conventions within the field