de Abajo Castrillo, Begoña

Architect (ETSAM 2012). Master of Science in Advance Architectural Design from Columbia University in the city of New York (MSAAD 2014). Phd Architect (ETSAM 2021, International Phd, Cum Laude) with her thesis “Split, Link, Assemble. Three Strategies Extracted from Construction Toys for Architectural Design Learning”. She was awarded with the Extraordinary Phd Prize (UPM), the National End of Studies Award (MECD) and the Extraordinary End of Studies Award (ETSAM). She has been teaching with a predoctoral UPM Program since 2017 and FPU 2015 and she is associate professor at DPA since 2021. She has received a Kinne Award from Columbia in 2014 and she has been Fulbright Scholar, Arquia Scholar and has received various grants for international stays such as the UPM 2019 program, the Bancaja scholarship and the IIT Exchange Student Scholarship. She has made international stays at TU Berlin, Columbia (NYC) and IIT (Chicago). She has also been an assistant professor at the Barnard School of Architecture (NYC), and has taught and lectured at several international institutions (AIA, NJIT, Columbia, COAM, COAS, COACAN, FULBRIGHT, IE, MCH, Politecnico Milano). As researcher and professor she is part of the “Prolab” Research Group and the “Dispositivos aglutinadores de proyectos” Pedagogical Innovation Group, with which they have obtained the first GIP Prize (UPM 2019) and a PIE Prize (UPM 2018).

Her work focused on systematic processes, strategic design and design research. Her articles have been selected for magazines such as Zarch, Lunch Journal, Pasajes, Aldiri, Barthlebooth or Incuna. Her built work has been published on Arquitectura Viva, Detail Magazine, On Diseño, Abitare or C3, among others.

She worked with Álvaro Siza and later in the Foster and Partners Madrid office. She co-directs DABG/deAbajoGarcía studio together with Carlos García since 2014. Her work has received several awards in international competitions, highlighting the first prize in Europan 14, the second prize in Europan 15, a honorable mention in Europan 13, the first prizes for a community center in Reinosa or the transformation of a square on the Saint Jacques Trail and the third prize for the Mahou Space in Madrid. It has been exhibited in different exhibitions, such as “Nice out there. Architecture in rural áreas” organized by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Germany (2022), the Venice Biennale or the specific Europan exhibitions. Her built work has been recognized with a Detail 2018 award, the BMIAA 2019 national award, the Ortega Alloza COACAN 2018 award and the Luis Moreno Mansilla COAM 2018 mention and has been selected at BEAU XIV, the FAD 2017 awards, ENOR 2017 and finalist at the Arquia Próxima Awards 2018.