Marina Carretero | IE School of Architecture and Design

Marina Carretero

About me

Marina Carretero was born in Segovia, Spain, where she completed her studies in Architecture at IE School of Architecture and Design. Before her graduation in 2013, Marina had already completed internships at renowned studios such as GilBartolomé ADW (Madrid, Spain), Kinzo Berlin (Berlin, Germany) and Studio Mumbai (Mumbai, India).

Once she finished her degree, she moved to Manchester (UK) where she started working as a lighting designer at Arup. She has recently been transferred to the Madrid office, where the Lighting Team is growing as part of the Advanced Building Consulting Group.

Marina has always loved being on site, and she is currently developing interests in all things digital including automation, AI/ML and VR for the built environment.

Marina Carretero
Lighting Designer at Arup
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Bachelor in Architectural Studies
Marina Carretero | IE School of Architecture and Design

"Doing my bachelor degree at IE School of Architecture and Design meant that once I finished I already had some work experience with my internships done, and that helped a lot when looking for the first real job."

Marina Carretero

During my career, I was very lucky to take part in very relevant projects such as the New York Wheel in New York, MECD with Mecanoo Architecten, the Etihad Stadium for the Premier League in Manchester, the installation Paradeigma for the Darc Awards in London, ProjectX with Populus in Hong Kong… (You can see more projects in my web).

New York Wheel

The varied digital and software skills helped me to differentiate myself from others, to be more efficient and to produce innovative deliverables that add value to our projects.

What I like the most about my current job is the fast pace environment and how fast a project starts and finishes.

This enables us to collaborate with several architects in a varied range of projects. From small installations and interventions to stadiums.

I love how, in lighting design, one day we can be super creative and the next hour we need to do a super precise glare and daylight calculation. This swift shift between the creative and the technical keeps me motivated!

We invest a lot of time in developing new tools that enable us to be more efficient and to produce or offer new services. Nowadays, we are “playing” a lot with VR to visualize building data, or generating AI/ML scripts that enables us to do innovative designs. I love that!

Etihad Stadium for the Premier League in Manchester

Arup is a global firm and that means that we have the chance to travel and collaborate with offices around the world, and be part of design teams including Foster + Partners, RSHP, Mecanoo, ZHA… which I very much enjoy.

Doing my bachelor degree at IE School of Architecture and Design meant that once I finished I already had some work experience with my internships done, and that helped a lot when looking for the first real job. Also, the innovative and digital vision of the program really helped me to differentiate myself from the rest.

Alumni