Diana Ibanez Lopez

Profession

Course Leader, MA Cities

College

Central Saint Martins

Person Type

Teacher

Biography

"I want to understand the many ways a city happens”.

I lead MA Cities, the newest course in the Spatial Practices programme. We develop creative approaches to city-making, working translationally and at every scale from the individual voice to global infrastructures.

Before leading the MA Cities course, I was Senior Curator and Interim co-Artistic Director for architecture and built environment projects at Create, an arts organisation dedicated to making projects that are useful to society in collaboration with communities, artists and local authorities.

In 2021, I co-curated a series of public realm and social infrastructure commissions to mark the centenary of the Becontree Estate, the largest housing estate in the UK; commissioned Talking Planning, a platform for demystifying the planning system and how the city is made, led by young people in Brent; co-curated a show at the RIBA and I am looking forward to the completion of A House for artists in Barking Town Centre by the end of the year.

I have taught architecture and urbanism at the Royal College of Art, UCL, TU Delft and Kingston School of Art, been a visiting professor of product design at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, and have been an associate of The Why Factory, MVRDV's architecture think-tank on future cities, since 2015. I have also lectured and been a visiting critic internationally.

After studying architecture at Cambridge University, I worked at MVRDV in Rotterdam, on projects including the Architecture Faculty at the TU Delft and the Rotterdam Markthal. Following further studies at the Royal College of Art and Münster University, I worked for a San Francisco start-up in a commissioning role in local government in London, at Phaidon Press as an editor, and as a postcolonial tour guide in the former Rio Tinto mines.

Diana Ibanez Lopez

Biography

Central Saint Martins

Contact

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