
Natalia Escobar Castrillon
Natalia Escobar Castrillón is a licensed architect and a professor of Architecture and Social Justice. She holds a PhD in Architecture and a Master in Design from Harvard University, as well as a Masters in Architecture from the University of Seville. Prior to Carleton, Escobar Castrillón taught graduate courses and advised master students at Harvard University, Boston University, Chile Catholic University, and São Paulo University. Prof. Escobar Castrillón’s research and teaching work addresses questions of spatial justice, social equity, collective identity, displacement, and representation in the built environment. Her publications unpack the complexities of contested buildings and sites worldwide, and discuss the role of design and narrative-making in supporting or silencing social groups. She has taught courses on these topics pursuing engagement practices with local communities.
She has been awarded grants from the Spanish Ministry of Education (TALENTIA), the Jorge Paulo Lemann Foundation, the David Rockefeller Foundation, the Harvard Asia Center, and the São Paulo Academic Research Foundation (FAPESP), among others, which allow her to pursue fieldwork in Europe, Latin America, and Asia where she studied the intersection of architecture with questions of power, gender, race, and social class through the work of architects Lu Wengyu and Wang Shu, and Lina Bo. More recently, Prof. Escobar was awarded a Carleton University International Research Seed Grant to produce visualizations of oppression and resilience of migrant populations in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank. This work been accepted for publication in the upcoming Routledge book Critical Companion to Race and Architecture.
Prof. Escobar Castrillón is also the founder of the architectural journal Oblique that received the AIA NY Center for Architecture Publications Award and aims to revise hegemonic design practices and discourses. She was also the invited editor of editions ARQ and of Materia Arquitectura issue 11 and recently published her reflections on Lina Bo’s alternative notion of modernity at N. Escobar, “Anthropophagic Phenomenology: Encounters at Lina Bo’s SESC Pompeia Cultural and Leisure Center,” in The New Urban Condition: Architecture and the City in the 21st Century, Eds. Tom Avermaete, Leandro Medrano, Luiz Recamán, New York: Routledge, 2021.
Sessions in which Natalia Escobar Castrillon participates
- Foreign Bodies: Mapping Experiences of Exclusion and Resistance of Migrant Women in Ottawa-Gatineau
- Presenter Natalia Escobar Castrillon (Carleton University) |
- 9:00 AM - 9:20 AM | 20 minutes Part of: Dis-placements: Spatial Stories of Migration I
- “Migrations are made, they don’t just happen. There are conditions which cause them” (Saskia Sassen)Although urban populations are becomi...
- Paper
Sessions in which Natalia Escobar Castrillon attends
- Foreign Bodies: Mapping Experiences of Exclusion and Resistance of Migrant Women in Ottawa-Gatineau
- Presenter Natalia Escobar Castrillon (Carleton University) |
- 9:00 AM - 9:20 AM | 20 minutes Part of: Dis-placements: Spatial Stories of Migration I
- “Migrations are made, they don’t just happen. There are conditions which cause them” (Saskia Sassen)Although urban populations are becomi...
- Paper
- Dis-placements: Spatial Stories of Migration I UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R515
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM | 1 hour 30 minutes
- The cultural landscapes of migration are an inextricable part of Canada’s urban, social and nation...
- Regular session
- Non-canonical approaches in contemporary teaching: Prospects and limitations
- Presenter Aniel Guxholli (McGill University) |
- 10:00 AM - 10:20 AM | 20 minutes Part of: Globalizing Architectural Scholarship in Canada I
- New approaches to conventional architectural histories have sought to create a different historical field, expanding its geographical and cultur...
- Paper
- A Home then, A Home Now UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R515
- Presenter Natalie Jianyi Kopp (University of Waterloo School of Architecture) |
- 11:00 AM - 11:20 AM | 20 minutes Part of: Dis-placements: Spatial Stories of Migration II
- Home is a deceptively simple term connecting a vast network of people, places, objects, and emotions. As people move from place to place, home m...
- Paper
- City as Civilization: From Ecumenopolis to Res Communis UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R525
- Presenter Alberto de Salvatierra (University of Calgary) |
- 11:00 AM - 11:20 AM | 20 minutes Part of: Globalizing Architectural Scholarship in Canada II
- The study of cities purely as discrete objects—that begin and end in a bounded condition—is becoming increasingly obsolete. As Clare Lyster desc...
- Paper
- Our Grand Domestic Revolution: (Re-)making home in Jaffna, Sri Lanka and the Greater Toronto Area UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R515
- Presenter Mayuri Paranthahan (University of Waterloo School of Architecture) |
- 12:00 PM - 12:20 PM | 20 minutes Part of: Dis-placements: Spatial Stories of Migration II
- Displacement, describing a sense of uprootedness, is seemingly irreconcilable with the grounding quality of domestic space. However, the practic...
- Paper
- Lunch and presentation of the Martin Eli Weil prize - Théâtre
- 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM | 2 hours
- Repas
- The ingredient of space: Reflections on diasporic dining practices UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R515
- Presenter Michael Windover (Carleton University) | Presenter Parker Poole |
- 1:30 PM - 1:50 PM | 20 minutes Part of: Dis-placements: Spatial Stories of Migration II
- Food offers a means of examining spatial stories of migration. As a set of heritage activities, the preparation, storage, and consumption of foo...
- Paper
- Suburban Smart Home UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R515
- Presenter Bianca Weeko Martin |
- 3:00 PM - 3:10 PM | 10 minutes Part of: Dis-placements: Spatial Stories of Migration III
- I discuss a narrative “zine”, Home Smart Home, which I created in 2021 as a commission for UKAI Projects and the Goethe-Institut Toronto ...
- Paper
- ACTITECTURE: Socially Transformative Architecture Proposal UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R515
- Presenter Joudy Kusaibati |
- 3:15 PM - 3:25 PM | 10 minutes Part of: Dis-placements: Spatial Stories of Migration III
- Architecture has the agency to either perpetuate social exclusion or initiate a social change that can offset the continuing forms of hostile ar...
- Paper
- Dislocated History: Tashme, 80 Years Later UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R515
- Presenter Tori Hamatani |
- 3:30 PM - 3:50 PM | 20 minutes Part of: Dis-placements: Spatial Stories of Migration III
- Nestled between Johnson Peak, best known as the location of Hope Slide, and Mount Potter, is the former site of the largest Japanese Canadian in...
- Paper
- Hearing indigenous space: notes on oral history methods along the sub-Arctic Pacific Coast UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R525
- Presenter Adil Mansure |
- 3:30 PM - 3:50 PM | 20 minutes Part of: Break (copy)
- This abstract is in anticipation of a long research journey I will soon embark upon: a sub-Arctic circumpolar oral history project to speak with...
- Paper
- Screening of the movie "Roger D'Astous" and conversation with filmmaker Étienne Desrosiers UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R510
- 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM | 2 hours
- Roger D'Astous is one of the most important Canadian architects of the 20th century. A student of Frank Lloyd Wright, he worked all his life to ...
- Seeing, hearing, experiencing, tasting architecture... I
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 PM | 13 hours 30 minutes
- “Felt experiences” have become key components of our understanding of the world in the digit...
- Regular session
- Queering Canada’s Built Environment UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R515
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM | 1 hour 30 minutes
- Queerness and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer histories are a part of architectural...
- Regular session
- Citizens, history, and heritage UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R520
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM | 1 hour 30 minutes
- Since the 19th century, citizens grouped within different types of associations, from t...
- Regular session
- Distinctively Canadian: considering Confederation's post-modern UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R525
- Presenter Nancy Oakley |
- 10:00 AM - 10:20 AM | 20 minutes Part of: Queering Canada’s Built Environment
- This paper proposes a critical appreciation of Canadian architecture as an expression of a distinctly complex and evolving relationship among pe...
- Paper
- Break (copy)
- 10:30 AM - 11:00 AM | 30 minutes
- Designing for accessibility and inclusivity UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R515
- 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM | 1 hour 30 minutes
- Ramps and curb cuts often first come to mind when one thinks about how the built environment is de...
- Regular session
- Heritage for Whom? Conserving Community Spaces UQAM, pavillon J.-A. De Sève (DS) - DS-R520
- 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM | 1 hour 30 minutes
- While the relationship between architecture and community are intrinsically intertwined, the built...
- Regular session
- Lunch
- 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM | 1 hour
- Repas