Andrea Balestrero (Italian, b. 1970) is an architect and artist whose practice sits at the hybridization of architecture, urban design, and visual art. Born in Genoa, he lives and works in Mexico City and was a founding member of the architecture collective gruppo A12 (1993-2016), whose work was exhibited internationally.
In 2013, with A12, he exhibited Appunti per la città del poco futuro at Pinksummer Gallery in Genoa, a speculative urban project imagining a city built around the needs of the elderly.That year he also began Metodo Salgari with Nina Fiocco, Ulises Matamoros, and Rogelio Sánchez, a nomadic project building community-based artistic and architectural installations that mimic distant landscapes, inspired by the Italian writer Emilio Salgari.In 2015 he contributed a text to the book Fundamental Acts, curated by Matteo Ghidoni for the exhibition “Archivo Italia” in Mexico City, which reinterpreted Superstudio's film series Five Fundamental Acts.In 2019, with Ofelia Burgos Soria, he proposed a project titled Máquinas Imaginantes for an open call by LIGA Espacio para Arquitectura in Mexico City, examining the Anillo Periférico ring road that encircles the city.
In 2021 he began releasing dynamic NFT works on Async Art, including Three Kings, in which three architectural forms and their background can be altered by the work's owner, and Hydraulic Tectonic 01, an abstract composition inspired by Josef Albers' work in Mexico that changes with the water level and light every hour.That year he also made AI Architects, a set of portraits of historical architects such as Antoni Gaudí, Zaha Hadid, and Le Corbusier generated by AI trained on the style of each architect's hand drawings.
