Cristina Castel-BrancoPortugal
Cristina Castel-Branco graduated in Landscape Architecture from the ISA – the Higher Institute of Agronomy in 1985; was a Fulbright–ITT grant holder and completed her Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture at the University of Massachusetts in 1989 and won the “Student Honors Award of American Society of Landscape Architects” in the same year having studied at the Graduate School of Design of Harvard University in 1988. She completed her doctoral degree in the History of Garden Art by the ISA in 1993 with the same entity awarding her Aggregation status in 2006.
Cristina Castel-Branco oversaw the restoration of the Ajuda Botanical Garden (1994-1997) and served as the garden’s director between 1997 and 2002. She was the lead Landscape Architectural consultant to EXPO’98 and project director of the Garcia de Orta Garden project on the EXPO’98 site.
She was elected a voting member of the International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes, ICOMOS, and World Heritage — UNESCO, in 2006 and, is an UNESCO ICOMOS counselor since 2010 has since contributed towards various cultural landscape evaluation missions on behalf of the world heritage list.
She chaired the ISA Landscape Architecture Board for ten non-consecutive years and sat on the ISA Board of Management from 1993 to 1995.
She was a founding member of the Portuguese Association of Historical Gardens and Sites, which Cristina Castel-Branco headed from 2003 to 2009; that, along with fellow founding members Ana Luísa Soares and Teresa Chambel, undertakes means of defending and promoting historical gardens in accordance with European policies and programs, such as EEA Grants, which financed the restoration of twelve gardens in Portugal between 2007 and 2010.
She was honoured by the “Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres” from the French Government in 2005 and “Ordre de Officier des Arts et des Lettres” from the French Government in 2005.