As a critic and social researcher, Javier Arbona works at the overlap between architecture, landscape, theory, and geography. He is currently completing a dissertation at the University of California at Berkeley, Department of Geography, on the transformation of military areas into urban parks in California cities. He practiced design and construction in Los Angeles, a city where he became more curious of the links between everyday landscapes and the region's culture and politics. His articles have appeared in several publications. He recently founded the Demilit Collective with Bryan Finoki and Nick Sowers. Together, they practice experimental forms of exploring military landscapes and everyday space.

As a graduate student at MIT, Arbona's writing on Vieques, Puerto Rico, studied how military occupation and the production of the landscape shaped Arcadian nature readings by protest and opposition groups that could detract from the social struggle for land rights on the island. Arbona also collaborated with colleagues on a number of competitions in the past, including the proposal for an experimental pleached home with Mitchell Joachim and Lara Greden (known as Team HED), published in The HOME House Project: The Future of Affordable Housing (edited by David J. Brown, MIT Press). The project was an Index Award Finalist, and has been widely covered by the international press and exhibited worldwide.

Arbona was on the undergraduate faculty of the School of Architecture at Polytechnic University, Puerto Rico, and was invited as a Visiting Critic to Cornell University during the Spring of 2009. He served as the Chief Editor of Archinect.com. Several articles are available at his website (see below).

Website: javier.est.pr