Ecaterina Stefanescu

Ecaterina teaches the design studio module of the Part 1 BSc (Hons) Architecture programme. She has supported the History and Theory modules in year 2 and year 3 and was a dissertation supervisor in year 6 of the Master's course. She has contributed across all years to the delivery of content and workshops relating to visual communication skills, both digital and analogue. Ecaterina uses her research, artistic and design practice as an architectural designer to inform and combine her international professional experience and expertise with her teaching at the Grenfell-Baines Institute of Architecture.

As a designer and researcher, Ecaterina's varied output has been recognised internationally and supported by established organisations in the fields of art and architecture.
She undertook a 6-month artistic residence at the Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art in Berlin between October 2021 and March 2022, where her artistic and research project “Rooms” recreated spaces of the Romanian diaspora through 1:20 paper models and collages. Read more about the project.

Her collaborative practice Estudio ESSE, co-founded in 2015, creates highly contextual site installations and bespoke design work. The self-built Costa del Sprawl Pavilion on the Costa del Sol in Spain was a finalist of Bauwelt's Das Erste Haus in 2018 and was published in Bauwelt Magazine. Cove Cottage, a house and former art studio in the Lake District that she renovated with her Estudio ESSE collaborator, was selected to be showcased at Romanian Design Week in 2021 and published in the national design press. See the project.

Ecaterina's opinion pieces and work has also been published in TU Delft’s Bnieuws magazine, Architect’s Journal (as part of their Sketchbook series) and she has delivered a lecture on circularity and material reuse at the University of Brighton’s “School of Reconstruction” in 2021.