Diana Ibáñez López is an academic and urbanist working at the intersections of spatial research, design strategy and education. She is Course Leader of MA Cities within the Spatial Practices Programme at CSM. The course develops new city-making practices through creative processes and situated research, working translationally and intervening across scales from the voice to global infrastructures.

Previously, Diana was a Visiting Professor at HfG Karlsruhe’s Product Design school, ran Architecture MA studios at the Royal College of Art and Kingston, was an associate of The Why Factory Future Cities think tank at the University of Delft, worked in architectural publishing at Phaidon Press, was the founding editor of a media start-up, applying a situated approach to analysing breaking news. Diana has also worked in the public sector in London, across housing and cultural infrastructure commissioning and delivery, worked for architecture firm MVRDV on projects such as the Markethall, which transformed the housing and public realm investment landscape in Rotterdam, and on masterplans for cities in China, Korea and the Netherlands.

Until 2022, Diana was interim Artistic Director at Create London, a charitable arts organisation delivering useful art in public contexts in collaboration with communities, artists and the public sector. At Create, she led on clienting and shaping the £5.5m Stirling Prize-nominated A House for Artists; commissioned three permanent pieces of social infrastructure for the Becontree Centenary centenary in Dagenham, including Yinka Ilori’s first permanent public playground and a network of sculptural benches by Studio Morison; co-curated the Lived in Architecture show at RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects); and led a curatorial team shortlisted to curate the British Pavilion at the XVII Venice Architecture Biennale that proposed turning the pavilion into a working pub to have much needed transnational conversations about the on-the-ground impacts of Brexit in the UK and Europe.

In parallel to her teaching, Diana is an executive board member at Troy Town Art Pottery, supervises three PhD students at CSM and is working on research into bureaucratic spatial practices