docar
Rocío Calzado is a Spanish architect and political scientist based in Paris, currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. Her academic research focuses on maintenance practices in architecture and urbanism, particularly within the field of social housing. She studies the processes of demolition and transformation in housing estates across European cities, aiming to understand how maintenance can support sustainable and equitable urban futures.
Rocío is a co-founding partner of docar, a documentary film collective dedicated to narrating urban and architectural controversies. Her filmmaking practice centers on European social housing, demolition, maintenance, and housing rights. Her films have been presented at institutions such as the Venice Architecture Biennale, MAXXI Museum in Rome, and the Royal Academy of London.
Her professional work as an urbanist explores maintenance at both the building and urban scales. She collaborates with municipalities, social landlords, and urbanists to design architecture and urban maintenance protocols that can foster long-term sustainability and social innovation. Since 2023, she has been involved in a consultancy project with the Ville de Paris and Paris Habitat, developing new housing maintenance strategies for the city.
Rocío holds a Bachelor's and Master's in Architecture from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, and a Master's in the Politics of Ecology from Sciences Po Paris. She has worked in international architecture offices such as MVRDV(Rotterdam), MQ Architecture (New York), Tsukamoto Lab (Tokyo), Ezquiaga Arquitectura (Madrid), and l’AUC (Paris).
Her academic work has been presented in forums such as Panel 21 at the United Nations’ World Urban Forum and published in journals including the European Journal of Spatial Development and the European Network for Housing Research. She is also a fellow of the Palladio Foundation and the LINA community, and a local collaborator of HouseEurope!