Alona Martinez Perez is a Spanish Architect and Urban designer. Originally from Bilbao, she qualified as an Architect at Sheffield University, and received her Masters of Science and Postgraduate Diploma in Urbanism at Edinburgh College of Art. She also holds a Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education and Practice from the University of Ulster, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK.
She was appointed regional Convener of the Urban Design Group for the Scottish Region in 2007-2010. During her tenure the group grew considerably and as a result the publication of the journal Urban Design was dedicated to Urbanism in Scotland for the first time. She is currently a Lecturer in Planning, specialising in Place making and Urbanism, at the University of Ulster. She has lectured on architecture and urban design in the UK, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Finland, and is a visiting tutor at ETSAB (Barcelona), University of Edinburgh and Dundee.
She co-curated and organised a large exhibition and associated conference on the history and current story of Belfast’s regeneration at Urbanpromo 2010 in Venice during the 2010 Venice Biennale. The work of the Belfast@Venice team was awarded the prestigious Urbanistica Prize for 2011 in the category of Balance of Interests by the Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica in Italy and this has been commended by the Mayor of Belfast, and one of the Irish Ministers. The exhibition was then opened in Naples, and in PLACE in Belfast. A Special Issue of the International prestigious journal Urbanistica published by INU (Italian Urban Institute|) on Belfast was published in 2012. In 2010 she interviewed British architect Lord Richard Rogers for the Italian journal Domus. She is currently doing her PhD on the subject of periphery in architecture.
Previously she was research director for the Geddes Institute for Urban Research (University of Dundee) where she directed one of the Geddes Institute's major initiatives, the Task Force on Cities & their Regions and was a Design Tutor in the University of Dundee School of Architecture. She has also been in private architectural practice for number of years in Scotland and the north of England. She has published extensively for specialised journals and books, including Domus, Urbanistica, and has collaborated with the National Research Council (CNR) in Italy, where she wrote two chapters with Ariadna Perich Capdeferro in the book Città dal mare. L'arte di navigare e l'arte di costruire le città by Massimo Clemente and the CNR.
