Dr Adriana Cobo Corey

Biography

Adriana Cobo Corey is an architect and educator with a doctorate in spatial practice. She works on architecture for social purpose with projects sited within the urban public realm. Her interdisciplinary practice on performance architecture focuses on the connection between taste and class in architectural and urban design. Adriana collaborates with marginalised and/or under-represented groups in partnerships with community organisations, corporations, and business and service providers. Her research inspects the role of designers as ‘taste makers’, fore-fronting taste as a key though usually subdued issue, in the quest towards more equitable, diverse, sustainable and just built environments.

Her design-research focuses on the ethics of aesthetics and draws connections between notions of maintenance, ethics and joy in spatial practice. Adriana co-leads a user-focused practice called Spatial Events, where projects are advanced on the premise ‘minimum budget maximum impact’. Her design methodologies are based on detailed observations and subsequent re-codifications of traditional codes of practice in architecture and urban design.

Adriana contributed to the British Pavilion Catalogue of Practice for the Architecture Biennale 2021 with the text Reflecting on The Disappearing Garden, about her performance series The Disappearing Garden (2016-2018) sited in London’s Granary Square. Her short essay Is Ornament a Crime? – Observations for architects on the Colombian Narco-aesthetics (2008) has been published in various languages, including Spanish and Farsi. Her panoramic installations Panorama of a Room (2005-2007) and Drawing the City (2004-2009) have been exhibited in Colombia, the UK and Poland. Adriana received her doctorate degree from UAL in 2021 with the project Taste Untold: Critical Performance Practice and Contemporary Public Space in 2021, passed with no amendments. In her more recent role as a subject leader on ethical practice for BA Architecture at Central Saint Martin's, Adriana has created The Ethical Table, a platform for furthering discussions, advancing agendas, developing curricula and making small scale projects on ethics in creative practice, with a focus on architecture and spatial practices.