Isabel Soto is beginning her PhD at LATTS under the supervision of Nathalie Roseau and Antoine Picon. Her thesis is entitled "The Design Engineer and the Architect, France, 1970-2000: Practices, Networks, Transfers in the Engineering Landscape." Her work focuses on analyzing and studying the collaboration between these two professions during the years 1970-2000 in France, as well as the legacy of this period marked by collective awareness of the ecological crisis, which is still relevant today.
With a dual background in engineering (University of Granada, Spain) and architecture (ENSA Paris-Malaquais), she has always been interested in the complementarity and synergy between these two disciplines in the service of creation. She has accumulated ten years of experience in international architecture firms, where she has had the opportunity to work on projects with great technical ambitions, such as the Luma Foundation in Arles (F. Gehry), the Saint-Denis Pleyel train station in Paris (Kengo Kuma), and the Toronto Law Courts (Renzo Piano). Far from distancing her from technology, these diverse experiences have reinforced her interest in the importance of communication between architects and engineers from the very beginning of a project's design.
With this in mind, alongside her professional career, she has been teaching at École des Ponts ParisTech since 2019. In collaboration with her colleague Laurie Rowenczyn, they lead the course "Les ouvrages construits: du projet à la réalisation" (Built Structures: From Design to Completion), an off-campus training program that offers an introduction to built structures through lectures and guided tours.