Natalia Escobar Castrillón

Assistant Professor

• natalia.escobar@carleton.ca

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Dr. Natalia Escobar Castrillón is a licensed architect and a professor of Architecture and Spatial Justice at Carleton University. She holds a PhD in History and Theory of Architecture and a master’s in design from Harvard University, as well as a master’s in architecture from the University of Seville. 

In her work, she establishes reciprocal relationships with marginalized communities to address questions of spatial justice and urban equity. Her recent publications discuss how to dismantle the White, patriarchal, classist, and ableist foundations of current urban design practices and cities. In particular, she has studied how gender, race, economic status, and immigration status mediate access to urban resources and infrastructures by listening to and mapping with community members in Canada and Chile. She has also explored the relationship between design and disability, illness, and neurodiversity, through drawing and ethnographic methods to advocate for cities and buildings that support care work and social interdependence.

Through her design research lab Foreign Futures, she strives to transform academic work into service to communities and generate tangible outcomes. Recently, she finished the construction of a community garden and social space at 255 Donald in Overbrook, Ottawa.

Previously, she studied the intersection of heritage conservation and social justice in contested places and institutions such as UNESCO-nominated sites, colonial plantation sites, cultural centers, and museums. Her work denounced how traditional conservation practices silenced marginalized social groups and erased alternative historic narratives. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of OBL/QUE, an academic journal on reparations and the critical conservation of architecture that received the 2017 AIA New York Center of Architecture publications award and was featured in the 2018 Architecture Biennial in Chile. The journal has recently explored anti-racist and indigenous perspectives on architectural conservation. 

Prior to Carleton, Dr. Escobar Castrillón taught graduate courses and advised students at Harvard University, Boston University, Chile Catholic University, and São Paulo University.

She is the recipient of federal and local grants and sponsorship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the non-profit Inter American Development Bank (IADB), the non-profit Ottawa Community Foundation (OCF), the Spanish Ministry of Education, the Jorge Paulo Lemann Foundation, the David Rockefeller Foundation (DRCLAS) the Harvard Asia Center, and the São Paulo Academic Research Foundation (FAPESP), among others, which allowed her to pursue fieldwork in Canada, the United States, Germany, Brazil, China, Chile, and Spain.

Her work has been disseminated in international journals such as Materia Arquitectura, and the Journal of the Society for the Study of Canadian Architecture (JSSAC), but also in international conferences organized by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC).