Mr. Santiago del Hierro
Architect and Researcher, Ecuador
Santiago del Hierro is an Ecuadorian architect and urban design researcher based in The Hague. Until 2017, prior to moving to The Netherlands, he taught at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE), where he developed and coordinated the Urban Design Masters program. At PUCE, he also headed the University’s post-disaster initiative to support the province of Esmeraldas after the 2016 earthquake that devastated Ecuador’s northern coast. In 2018, he co-led the urban design team in charge of Quito’s framework and roadmap for Transit-Oriented Development for the World Bank and the Municipality of Quito. He is currently researching on social green/blue infrastructure for the Addis Ababa Urban Age Task Force as a consultant for the Bernard van Leer Foundation’s Urban 95 Program, and has recently joined the Sacred Headwaters Initiative team to focus on contemporary spatial planning in Indigenous Communities of Ecuador and Peru’s Amazon Basin.
Del Hierro holds a Master in Architecture from Yale University, where he attended as a Fulbright Scholar, and between 2009 and 2010 was a resident researcher at the Design Department of the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. He has been a guest professor at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, the Escuela Técnica Superior de Aquitectura de Valencia and TU Delft.