Director of Visiting School

Pedro Ignacio Alonso studied architecture at the Catholic University in Chile and completed his Ph.D at the Architectural Association on the modernist conceptualization of architecture as a work of assemblage. He has taught at the AA since 2005, and is professor of architecture at the Universidad Católica in Santiago. Between 2006 and 2009 he worked for Arup’s Urban Design office on a number of large-scale projects in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan. He currently leads the Extreme Weather Project, investigating the design of industrial ecologies constrained by extreme weather conditions and scarce energy resources in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Recent publications include A panel’s tale: KPD and the Politics of Assemblage (AA Files 59, London 2009); Acronym (AA Files 57, London 2008); and Post-Digital (MArq 04, Santiago 2008). He is also guest editor of a special issue of the Chinese Magazine New Architecture (no 129) titled Critical Fabrications (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, April 2010). Together with Hugo Palmarola he received a RIBA Research Trust Award in 2008, and more recently he has been awarded with a Research Grant from The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California (2010).