Pedro Ignacio Alonso is an architect, educator and curator. He teaches theory of architecture and design at the Universidad Católica de Chile, where he is Associate Professor, and at the Architectural Association, where he is Program Director of the AA Visiting School to Santiago. Over the last few years he has conducted research on large-concrete panel systems of prefabrication and their international transfer during the Cold War years, from the USSR to Cuba and Chile. This transdisciplinary research project touches not only on the histories of architecture and construction technology, but also visual culture, labor history, and international relations.

A 2014 exhibition of Alonso's research, titled "Monolith Controversies" and co–curated with Hugo Palmarola, was awarded a Silver Lion during the 14th Venice Architecture Biennial. Together they are the authors of the books Panel (Architectural Association, 2014) and Monolith Controversies (Hatje Cantz, 2014), obtaining a DAM Architectural Book Award granted by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and Frankfurt Book Fair. Alonso holds a MSc in architecture from the Universidad Católica de Chile, and completed his Ph.D at the Architectural Association in London. He has received research grants from the RIBA in London and the Getty Institute in Los Angeles, and has been Visiting Scholar at the CCA in Montreal for his research on large-concrete panel systems of prefabrication. With Palmarola, he has curated exhibitions at the Architectural Association in London, and has exhibited his work at Pratt Institute in New York, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Sao Paulo Cultural Centre in Brazil. Alonso is also the author of Deserta: Ecology and Industry in the Atacama Desert (ARQ, 2012), and has published articles at AA Files, San Rocco and Manifest, and book chapters with Routledge (2013), and MIT Press (2014).