Team

José María de Cárdenas (Seville, 1965) graduated in architecture from the Seville School of Architecture (1993), after studying Economics and Mathematics at the University of Seville. In 1992 he founded, with his fellow student Luis Ybarra, a small technical office under the name DeCYA, which was renamed EDDEA in 2007. He has led the firm since its foundation.

In those early years he directed refurbishments in Seville’s historic centre — Plaza Mata, calle Alegría, calle Santa Clara —, the Morgan Stanley offices on Paseo de Colón and the studio’s own headquarters in the Port of Seville, opened in 2005.

As the partner responsible for urbanism and strategy, he led the Santa Bárbara district masterplan in Seville, winner of the ASPRIMA award for best urban development of 2007, and the masterplans for the former bus station of Constanța (Romania) and for the Białołęka district of Warsaw (Poland), where the studio opened its first international office in 2006. For more than a decade he headed the firm’s international practice, with commissions such as the Spanish Quarter in Moscow; he drove the creation of CITYTHINKING in 2009 and, in 2013, of Atlántica Platform, the alliance with Ghenova and Grupo Galia, which he led as managing director.

Today he heads the technical office of the Port Urban District of Seville and is a regular voice in the debate on cities and housing: he has written on industrialisation and affordable housing in Andalucía Inmobiliaria and has spoken at forums such as the Iniciativa Sevilla Abierta series, Efisur, “La ciudad que piensa” and PORTUS 50. He is a co-founder of the Asociación Andalucía Sostenible and has directed the expert courses in Real Estate Management and in Integrated Project Management at the Instituto de Estudios Cajasol.

Luis Ybarra (Seville, 1965) graduated in architecture from the Seville School of Architecture (1992), specialising in design. Before qualifying he worked as a site assistant on several buildings at the Expo 92 site, where he gained solid experience in concrete and steel structures.

In 1992 he founded, with José María de Cárdenas, a small technical office under the name DeCYA, the origin of EDDEA. Since then he has led large-scale industrial, commercial and office projects such as the La Raya Business Park in Aljaraque (Huelva), Novapark in Benacazón (Seville), the Galia Puerto office park and business centre and the Royal Business Park in Seville, a complex of more than 70,000 m² built, as well as the J5 subsidised housing scheme in Málaga for EPSA, a competition winner in 2000. He also led EDDEA’s role in the site supervision of the Kaohsiung Pop Music Centre (Taiwan).

He sits on EDDEA’s management board and is responsible for the constructability review of the studio’s projects. He was part of the site supervision team for the Casa Forestier residential scheme in Seville and, together with José María de Cárdenas, of the team behind the hotel conversion of Aníbal González’s building on Avenida de la Constitución for Serras Collection.

He champions increasingly industrialised, efficient and sustainable construction, and a way of working that brings the client and every party involved — including the contractor — into the project from day one.