Cristina Gonzalez-Longo

Registered Architect, UK, Architects Registration Board, ARB

RIBA Specialist Conservation Architect (SCA), RIBA Conservation Register

Chartered Architect, Royal Institute of British Architects, RIBA

Chartered Architect, Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, RIAS

Chartered Architect, Spain. Incorporation of Architects in Asturias (Spain), COAA

PRINCE2 Foundation, Project Management

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, FHEA

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, FRSA

Cristina is the Director of the MSc in Architectural Design for the Conservation of Built Heritage and Lecturer in Architectural Heritage, Conservation and Community Identity. After graduating at the School of Architecture of the Technical University of Madrid (ETSAM), she spent three years in Rome with a scholarship from the Italian Government to specialise in architectural conservation at the University of Rome "La Sapienza". Her research interests evolve mainly around architectural conservation and new design in historic buildings and sites. She finds important to integrate disciplines such as architectural history and theory, conservation theory, sustainability, urban regeneration, construction history, materials technology, archaeology and philosophy of culture in order to be able to research, understand, interpret, design and transmit the values and meaning of a historic building effectively to students and the wider society.

Cristina has 20 years experience as Chartered architect both in UK and Spain and is RIBA Specialist Conservation Architect, running her own practice, Cristina Gonzalez-Longo Architect (CG-LA). She has also been Examiner for the Architects Registration Board (ARB) Prescribed Examination (2004-14) and  member of design review groups and policy advisory bodies in England and Scotland. Her career is balanced between practice, research and education, in a mainly European context. She has had a central role in taking decisions concerning historic buildings of outstanding national importance and wide experience in leading the design, management and procurement of award winning architectural projects (both conservation and new build).

She started her career as independent architect when she won a competition to conserve the 12th century church of San Esteban de Sograndio (COOA Architecture Award 1999 finalist) in Spain. After moving to the UK, she has been project and resident architect in high profile and award-winning new design and conservation projects, such as Queensberry House, a 17th century Grade A Listed Building, part of the new Scottish Parliament building (RIBA Stirling Prize 2005). She also designed Bowbridge Primary School in Newark (RICS Sustainability Award 2009). The building has an innovative lamella glulam structure and is an exemplary case study in the Building Schools for the Future and NCSL programme ‘Leading sustainable schools’.

- Complex architectural conservation projects

- New design in historic cities, buildings, monuments and archaeological
areas

- Reuse of historic buildings and monuments

- Conservation theory

- Architectural history and the transformation of buildings

- Tendencies and restoration in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scottish architecture

- Methods, strategies and instruments used by architects over the centuries in the transformation of a place.

- Conservation, Sustainable design and construction.

- Environmental design, energy and historic buildings

- Historic Construction technologies and systems

- Historic buildings, urban infrastructure and context
- Historic cities, buildings, monuments and local identity

- The Scottish Parliament building and the development of architecture and urban design in Scotland

- People, history, memory and historic buildings
- Architecture and archaeology