Javier Arpa Fernández teaches architecture and urbanism, works as a researcher, author and curator. He holds a Master's degree in Architecture from TU Delft, where he is now the Research and Education Coordinator at Winy Maas' The Why Factory.
He is a lecturer at IAAC Barcelona, ETSA Madrid and ETH Zurich. In 2021, he was chairman of the jury of the French architecture prize D'Architectures. He has also worked at Harvard GSD, Columbia GSAPP, as a visiting professor at ENSA-Belleville and ENSA-Versailles in France and lecturer at IE University in Spain. As a lecturer and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, he is currently co-leading the research project "Atlas of African Urbanization".
He was the managing editor of the a+t group, one of Europe's leading publishers in the field of architecture and urbanism. He is co-author of Density, Hybrids and Civilities, In Common, The Public Chance and the Strategy series.
In 2013, he co-organized the conference The City That Never Was in collaboration with the Architectural League of New York. In 2015, he curated the exhibition Paris Habitat and authored the monograph Paris Habitat: One Hundred Years of the City, One Hundred Years of Life.
He has worked for a number of architectural firms in Argentina, the Netherlands, Spain and France, led several urban planning projects in China and provided independent advice to urban planning projects as a consultant.