Octavio Mestre is an architect from the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Barcelona (ETSAB). After numerous scholarships in various European countries, in 1983 and 1988 he was a professor in the Department of Theory and Composition at this school, and between 1987 and 1990 he was a municipal architect of Barcelona in the Planning Services, a period during which he decided to dedicate himself fully to professional practice. Correspondent for several magazines and author of numerous articles and exhibitions, he is currently co-director of the digital magazine t18. He was a visiting professor at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) during the spring semester of 1994, and is a founding member of the School of Architecture at the International University of Catalonia (UIC), where he taught between 1996 and 2001. Since 1997 he has also been a professor of master's and postgraduate courses at the Barcelona University School of Design and Engineering (ELISAVA) on corporate and office design, as well as at several French, Italian and American universities.
Among his notable works are numerous single-family homes, the HLM housing block in Toulouse (National Social Housing Award 1993 in France), the complete renovation of the L'illa Diagonal Shopping Center and the Olivé Gumà Clinic in Barcelona, and various corporate headquarters, among which stand out Mutua Madrileña on Paseo de La Castellana and the headquarters of the management of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva.
