Lecturer in Architecture
Izabela Wieczorek is a registered architect (COAM), researcher and educator. She holds a MSc in Architecture and Urban Design from Politechnika Krakowska and a PhD in Architecture from ETSAM UPM. Situated at the nexus of academia and practice, Izabela’s research engages with both historiography and methods of atmospheric design, exploring its affective, environmental, societal and political significance as well as implications for architectural practice and pedagogy.
Over the last 15 years, Izabela’s design practice, scholarly work and teaching—developed both individually and collectively—have covered fields and topics such as questions of perception and representation, somatic practices, technical mediation and the process of reflecting on and developing architecture by means of experimentation in the intersection of diverse disciplines and art forms.
Her work has been presented, published and exhibited internationally, including the Works+Words Biennale of Artistic Research in Architecture at the The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation (2019) and the Spanish Pavilion Exhibition ‘#Becoming’ at the XVI Venice Architecture Biennale (2018).
Izabela has lectured widely and has been invited as a guest critic, lecturer and examiner to a number of institutions. Prior to joining the University of Reading, where she is currently a Lecturer in Architecture and a Master of Architecture Programme Director, she taught at Arkitektskolen Aarhus (AAA), Departamento de Arquitectura Universidad de Alcalá de Henares (UAH), Escuela de Arquitectura Universidad Francisco de Vitoria (UFV), Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca Campus de Madrid (UPSAM), and Instituto Europeo di Design Madrid (IEDM). She has also been a visiting lecturer in Energy and Sustainability at a postgraduate professional programme of Advanced Studies in Collective Housing run by ETSAM UPM and ETH Zürich.
From 2003 to 2017 Izabela was a co-director of an architecture firm Gálvez+Wieczorek, whose projects have been awarded prizes as well as published and exhibited internationally, including a monographic exhibition Excepto 21, Active Cartographies, at Fundación Cultural COAM (2008). G+W work focused on civic ecologies and alternative modes of inhabitation, exploring tools and methodologies of sensory design and experiences in urban living.
Since 2017, building on the previous research and following G+W’s ethos, Izabela has been developing a project of ‘Atmospheric Architecture Agency’ (AAA). Conceived as a research-based design practice, with a particular interest in trans-disciplinary correspondences and experimental design methodologies, the AAA focuses on applied aspects of spatial atmospheres and urban ambiances, exploring affective, performative, and participatory aspects of Architecture, and searching for new forms of environmental imagination.
Izabela is an associate member of the international research platform Atmospheric Spaces: Aura, Stimmung, Ambiance, the International Ambiances Network, and the Urban Living Research Group at UoR. She is also a member of the reviewing committee of Ambiances. International Journal of Sensory Environment, Architecture and Urban Space.
Urban Living Themes
· Spatial atmospheres and urban ambiances
· Somatic practices and agencies in urban realm
· Politics of atmosphere
· Climate change and environmental imagination
Selected Publications
· Wieczorek, Izabela. ‘Catoptric Theatres: On Devices of Atmospheric Staging’, IDEA Journal Interior Technicity: Plugged In and/or Switched On, Vol. 17 No. 01, Autumn 2020.
· https://idea-edu.com/journal/index.php/home/article/view/393
· Wieczorek, Izabela. ‘Dispositivos atmosféricos, tecnologías de la inmersión y acumulaciones de espumas, o las paradojas de la burbuja.’ [‘Atmospheric Devices, Immersion Technologies and Foam Accumulations, or the Bubble Paradox’]. In José Miguel de PRADA
POOLE. La arquitectura perecedera de las pompas de jabón. Málaga: Recolectores Urbanos Editorial, 2019, pp. 59-64. ISBN: 978-84-949663-1-6.
· Wieczorek, Izabela. ‘Materialized Immaterialization.’ In A+T 47, Interior Matters, Series SOLID Harvard GSD, edited by Aurora Fernández Per and Javier Mozas. A+T Architecture Publishers, 2017, pp. 60-65. ISBN 978-84-608-9261-8.
· Wieczorek, Izabela. ‘Constructing Situations or Phenomeno-praxis.’ In Ambiances, demain | Ambiances, tomorrow | Ατμόσφαιρες, Αύριο Proceedings of the 3rd International Congress on Ambiances, edited by Nicolas Rémy and Nicolas Tixier. International Ambiances
Network & University of Thessaly, 2016, pp. 719-724. ISBN: 978-2-9520948-6-3.
· Wieczorek, Izabela. ‘Atmospheric Materiality. Towards an Aesthetic Engagement and a Phenomenological Manifestation.’ In Passpartout 37, Materialitet, 2016, pp.147-163, ISSN: 0908-5351.
· Wieczorek, Izabela. ‘From Atmospheric Awareness to Active Materiality.’ In Practising Aesthetics, edited by Lilianna Bieszczad. Kraków: Wydawnictwo LIBRON-Filip Lohner, 2015, pp. 255-264. ISBN 978-83-65148-42-1.
· Wieczorek, Izabela. ‘From Perceptual Apparatus to Immersive Field of Experience. Notes on Atmospheric Perception.’ In PERCEPTION in Architecture. HERE and NOW, edited by Claudia Perren, and Miriam Mlecek. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp. 152-162.
ISBN: 1-4438-7256-3.
· Wieczorek, Izabela; Gálvez Peréz, Mª Auxiliadora, G+W Excepto 21. Cartografías activas/Active cartographies, Madrid: FUCOAM, ea! Ediciones de arquitectura, 2008, 80 pages. ISBN: 978-84-96656-52-9.
· Wieczorek, Izabela; Gálvez Peréz, Mª Auxiliadora, ‘Gran Vía Atmosférica’. In Laboratorio Gran Vía, edited by Iñaki Ábalos. Madrid: Fundación Telefónica, 2010, pp. 72-99. ISBN: 978-84-89884-96-0.
· G+W design work has been published in a range of Architecture and Art magazines such as: Arquitectura Viva, Arquitectura COAM, Arquitectos CSCAE, AV Proyectos, Bauvelt, Detail, Pen Magazine, Minerva, Parametro, A10 new European architecture, A+T, Boronia.