Paper Chandeliers - Spain 
Cristina Parreño

Biography 

Cristina Parreño Alonso is a licensed architect in Spain and UK, with ten years of professional experience working in Madrid and London. She holds a Masters and Bachelor degree in Architecture and Civil Engineering from the University of Madrid, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura (ETSAM) where she graduated with honors. 

She started her professional career in Madrid. Later she moved to London and joined Foreign Office Architects (FOA), where, as project director she was responsible for a number of projects in Spain and UK for several years.

Since 2009, she has been working on her own practice and teaching at various architecture universities. She has taught design studio at the University of Western Australia, at the State University of New York at Buffalo and she currently teaches graduate and undergraduate design studios at MIT School of Architecture and Planning.

She has won several architectural competitions, among others, the 1st prize for the Urban Rehabilitation of the Business complex AZCA in Madrid, award for the Housing Competition for Young Architects J5 in Andalusia and Honorable Mention for the National Library of Slovenia. Her work has been published in newspapers like El País and El Mundo and in several architectural magazines like Quaderns, Via Arquitectura and Arquitectura COAM.

The Book at the Edge

The immateriality and ubiquity of the new modes of information generate today more than ever the need of the library as that one place where the physical space and the material become fundamental for the exchange of knowledge. This space is generated in the project through an architectural component that acts as a book container; this element is also the main construction unit of the building and at the same time it hosts the mechanical services and modulates the natural light that pierces the façade. 

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