Sound Playground
· About ·
My name is Isabel Gutiérrez Sánchez. I am a researcher and educator with a background in architecture (TUBerlin-ETSAM, 2012), anthropology (UCM, 2014) and urban sociology (LSE, 2015). My research work situates mainly across the fields of urban anthropology, critical geography and feminist political theory. Currently, I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Spanish National Research Council with a Juan de la Cierva fellowship. I did my PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL, 2020). I have held teaching positions at the UCL – the Bartlett School of Planning, the Department of Art History and the Development Planning Unit. In the past, I practised as an architect and was a member of the editorial board of the journal Pasajes de Arquitectura y Crítica.
Overall in my work, I am interested in practices, imaginaries and spaces of life in common and collective care within contemporary urban contexts marked by widespread processes of neoliberalisation and crisis. My current research project explores grassroots and other ex-titutional modes of knowledge production for eco-social transformation in cities in Southern Europe. Previously, I focused on grassroots infrastructures of social reproduction and care practices that sustain urban struggles.
At present, I am part of Mouries Collective, a group of female researchers, artists and therapists based in Athens (Greece). Through our projects, we develop methods, thoughts and intuitions for creating connections with the beings who inhabit the land with us. Our collaborative work combines elements of performance, screenings, collective healing and rituals, drawing, storytelling and inner group practices of care.
This website gathers a quite varied array of works, from some dear projects from my years at the school of architecture to ethnographic projects that combine different media, writings, zines, participatory workshops and performative actions. Perhaps, what cuts across them is a personal interest in the study and experimentation with counter-narratives, practices and imaginaries that can gesture toward living alternatives that move away from the logics of extraction, domination, numbness and abstraction that prevail in our wounded world.