Anantu.Studio is an independent consultancy working at the intersection of architectural expertise and institutional strategy for museums and cultural institutions.
Few decisions carry more institutional weight than a capital building project, and few boards have, in-house, the technical fluency to fully evaluate what's being proposed against the institution's budget, mission, and long-term operational reality. Design teams bring vision. Owner's representatives bring process discipline. What's often missing is a technical voice that sits unambiguously on the institution's side of the table, able to read a construction document as closely as an architect and translate it back into terms a board can act on.
Anantu.Studio was founded to be that voice.
The name draws on two ideas: Ananta, the Sanskrit concept of the infinite, and Vastu, the discipline of built space. Together they describe the practice's underlying commitment: that institutional buildings not only house culture but embody the institution’s mission and secure its long-term legacy.
The practice is led by Alicia Hernanz, who spent more than a decade working for some of Europe's leading architecture practices, the last five directing the design and delivery of a major museum expansion at the Art Institute of Chicago, before founding Anantu.Studio, to bring that same technical fluency directly to institutional clients. The practice also works alongside project managers, owner's representatives, and design teams who value a collaborator equally conversant in architectural intent and institutional reality.
Anantu.Studio works across four areas: institutional strategy and programming, strategic design review, owner's representation, and exhibition design, engaging each project at the scale and phase where it can do the most good, from early brief definition through construction administration.
STUDIO VALUES
Listening comes first.
To the mission, the collection and the people who know it, before any drawing or material.
We translate in both directions.
We read a construction document as closely as an architect and put it in terms a board can act on. With a design team, we do the reverse: we turn the institution’s reality into constraints a designer can work with.
We are clear about who we work for.
Engaged by an institution, we are its technical advocate; engaged by a design team, its collaborator. Either way, we make that clear from the first conversation.
We name the limits.
Including when they test the design intent. A constraint understood early is one you can design with, and one you can defend.
We think in decades.
Ananta, the infinite, and Vastu, built space: our name is also a test we apply to every decision. Will it still serve the institution when its collection, its staff and its needs have changed?
LEADERSHIP
ALICIA HERNANZ
FOUNDER / DIRECTOR
Alicia Hernanz is the founder and director of Anantu Studio. Trained as an architect in Spain, she spent more than a decade working within some of Europe's leading design practices , including Ian Ritchie Architects, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, and Barozzi Veiga, developing a specialism in the design and delivery of major cultural and institutional buildings.
For five years, while working as project director with Barozzi Veiga, she led the design team on a major expansion at the Art Institute of Chicago, directing a group of architects and engineers across Barcelona and Chicago through design development, project management, and construction administration. That work gave her a close, practical understanding of what it takes to carry an institutional vision from brief to built reality, budgeting and fundraising alignment, collections care, sustainable building systems, and the discipline of construction delivery.
She founded Anantu Studio to bring that same technical fluency directly to cultural institutions, working as an independent advisor to museums and the teams that build for them.
SELECTED EXPERIENCE
Barozzi Veiga · Project Director · 2021-2026
Art Institute of Chicago:
- Grainger Center for Science and Conservation. Opening in 2027.
- Applied Arts of Europe Galleries. Opened summer 2025.
- Allerton Access Lobby. Opened spring 2025.
- Fleischman-Lougheed Modern Art Museum.
Renzo Piano Building Workshop · Project Architect · 2016-2020
Paddington Quarter, London
Apartment building, Monaco (facades and light structures).
Ritchie*Studio · Architect · 2014-2016
Royal Academy of Music extension, London. Project awards: RIBA National Award 2018, RIBA London Building of the Year 2018, EU Mies Award nominee 2019.