Member News: Coming Full Circle

This article has been written as part of the AIA Newsletter’s commitment to member news.  If you are aware of UK Chapter members’ involvement in newsworthy projects, research or events, please bring them to our attention via chapterexecutive@aiauk.org and we will publish the story.  Remember we will not know what has been achieved unless someone tells us!

Elizabeth Casqueiro, AIA, was an active AIA UK member in the early 2000s, and served as the 10th Chapter President in 2003.  

Although she originally studied art and design in her native Portugal, she left her first love, re-directed towards architecture and eventually received a MArch degree in 1986.  Her 30-year career in global real estate management started with the World Bank (IBRD) in Washington DC, moved to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London and ended back with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in the US.  Read a summary of her professional career HERE.

When she retired from her long association with the World Bank Group in 2014, Elizabeth was not quite ready to quit working and decided to pursue new directions, first, in academia – she still teaches part time for Georgetown University’s Master of Real Estate program – and, then, in art.  

Having returned full-heartedly to her early love of art, Elizabeth has been no stranger to prestigious awards, grants and exhibitions; however, the decision of the IFC/World Bank Group Art Curator to hang ‘Pieces of Me’ in the recently expanded IFC headquarters – a project she had initiated - has given her second-wind career a particularly sweet fulfilment. It is a full circle success story, bringing her art and architecture careers together again. 

The wall hanging itself is also an act of recycling, turning her old paintings into a new ensemble – a letting go of the old to make room for the new.  This reflects ‘that vital process of integration and self-realisation that immigrants all over the world must undertake’.  

More recently, Elizabeth has been juried into an exhibition in central London that will open on May 12.  (Since this was written, the exhibition has been postponed until later in the year due to the coronavirus.)  She is looking forward to seeing old friends and colleagues at the show during her stay in London. Watch for details to follow on the AIA UK Instagram account closer to the event.  In the meantime, you can see more of her artwork HERE. 

Written by: Lorraine King, AIA