Javier Arpa Fernández is an architecture and urbanism academic, author, curator, and researcher. Trained in a Master of Science in Architecture at Delft University of Technology, Javier specialises in urban design and research and dissemination.

Javier is the Research and Education Coordinator of the Why Factory, a global think-tank and research institute, and the Curator of Public Programs, both at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment (Delft University of Technology). Javier is also Editor-in-Chief at MVRDV. During 2019, Javier was the Deputy Editor of Domus magazine in Milan, Italy.

Previously, Javier taught at Harvard, Columbia and Penn Universities in the United States, ENSA-Bellevile and ENSA-Versailles in France, and IE University in Spain.

He is the curator of the exhibitions Paris Habitat, held in 2015 at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris, and is the author of the monograph Paris Habitat: One Hundred Years of City, One Hundred Years of Life. In 2013, he co-organized the conference The City That Never Was in cooperation with the Architectural League of New York. At the University of Pennsylvania, he is currently conducting the research project Africa: An Atlas of Speculative Urbanization. He co-curated the exhibition African Speculations at the Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival in July 2017, Architekturgalerie München in 2018 and Politecnico di Milano in February 2019.

Javier was Editor in Chief for a+t research group, one of Europe’s leading publishers in architecture and urban design, where he co-authored the Density, Hybrids, In Common, Civilities and Strategies series.