Alejandro Restrepo-Montoya graduated with honors from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana UPB in Medellín, Colombia, in 1996. The same year, he founded Estudio Central. He became specialist in Business Management for Architecture at UPB (2001) and obtained a Doctor Engineer with Merit from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2018.
Restrepo-Montoya has been engaged as lecturer and visiting profesor at numerous international institutes, amongst others at the United Nations in New York, TU Berlin, Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and National University of Arts in South Korea.
Currently, he is University Professor at the Faculty of Architecture of UPB and scientific ambassador for the DAAD (German Academic Support Service) in Colombia.
Between 2016-2019 Alejandro Restrepo-Montoya was director of the Office for Strategic Urban Projects of the Medellín mayor's office and since 2018 he is director of the Switzerland-Colombia Urban Transformation Program from the ETH Zürich and the UPB in Medellín. Additionally, he leads the “urbanthinktank_next_Medellín” in association with Prof. Arch. Hubert Klumpner and Arch. Diego Ceresuela since 2021.
As scientific inventor Restrepo-Montoya holds patents in Colombia and Panama for the Industrialized Modular Constructive System — an invention developed within his doctoral research for “Concrete Home” at TUM.
Restrepo-Montoya’s various projects have also received several awards: For example, he is three-time winner of the Honorable Mention at the Colombian Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2003, 2008, 2020), winner of the Distinction and Recognition Award at the Pan-American Architecture Biennial in Quito (2004), and winner of the Antonio de la Torre y Miranda Award from the Colombian Society of Architects for the direction of strategic urban projects in Medellín and for the contributions to urban development in Colombia (2020). Most recently, his professional work has been has been selected by the Vienna Architecture and Urbanism Biennial, Austria (2021).