Elena Palacios Carral
- Visiting Lecturer
Elena is Founding Director of architecture design and research platform Forms of Living based in London.
Elena graduated from Diploma at The Architectural Association School of Architecture in 2012. In 2015, she completed The MA in History and Critical Thinking at the same school where she is currently enrolled as a PhD Candidate. She has worked as an Architectural Designer in Mexico City and the UK, and as an architectural researcher at Forensic Architecture. Elena has been a visiting critic at various UK Universities, taught first-year design studio at The University of Hertfordshire in 2017–2018 and she is currently an Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University where she is co-leading DS7 on the MArchD course since 2018. Since 2020 Elena is co-leading studio 2.6 at Kingston University in the second year of the undergraduate course and a visiting lecturer at the RCA in the History and Theory studies department in the School of Architecture.
Key details
School, Centre or Area
Gallery
More information
Practice
Elena is interested in the relationship between form and life in architecture.
Research Funding
Scholarship awarded by Mexican bodies: CONACYT and FONCA. Currently funding Elena’s PhD Research at The Architectural Association.
Awarded the AA Bursary for her PhD Studies at The Architectural Association (2017, 2018, 2019)
Awarded the AA Bursary for her MA in History and Critical Thinking at The Architectural Association (2015–2016)
Research funding
Scholarship awarded by Mexican bodies: CONACYT and FONCA. Currently funding Elena’s PhD Research at The Architectural Association.
Awarded the AA Bursary for her PhD Studies at The Architectural Association (2017, 2018, 2019)
Awarded the AA Bursary for her MA in History and Critical Thinking at The Architectural Association (2015–2016)
Current and recent projects
PhD research at The Architectural Association School of Architecture in London
The Studioification of The Home: The Freelance Artist's Studio in Western Europe from 1608 to today.
(2017–present)
The thesis explores the studioification of the home, or rather, the process by which the home has been transformed into the studio. The figure of the artist is currently understood as a kind of curious prototype, whereby the sites of living and working are extended beyond the fixed site of the house to the studio, the street, the cafe, and the landscape beyond. Since their lives are rarely organised around conventional task divisions or family structures, they presage contemporary society’s embrace of the nomadic freelancer, who is supposedly no longer bound by the nuclear family or permanent fixed employment. This thesis argues that this informality of arrangement is in many ways a mischaracterisation and belies the role the state has in making such conditions.
Supervised by Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria Sheherazade Giudici at The Architectural Asscoiation School of Architecture.
Publications, exhibitions and other outcomes
Writing
Palacios Carral, Elena, (2020) The Freelancer, The Individuation of The Artist’s Work in Paris 1608–1805. AA Files, 77, edited by Maria Sheherazade Giudici, pp.103-112.
Illustrations
Scott, K., 2016. The Philosopher’s Room: Diderot’s Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown. Oxford Art Journal, 39(2), pp.185–216.
Featured Work
Sandmeier, N., 2014. Little Worlds. London: AA Publications.
Exhibitions
(2018) Counter Investigations. ICA. London. As part of the Forensic Architecture’s Team
(2017) Forensic Architecture: Towards an Investigative Aesthetics. MUAC. Mexico City. As part of the Forensic Architecture’s Team
External collaborations and activities
(2020–) Visiting Lecturer, Kingston University
(2018–) Associate Lecturer, Oxford Brookes University
(2017–2018) University of Hertfordshire