After studying architecture in Poland and Spain, Izabela worked for a few years for several renown architecture firms in Spain. In 2003 she co-founded an architecture practice, called G+W Galvez & Wieczorek arquitectura, which operated in Madrid until 2017. Their projects ranged from interior design and building design, to landscape and urban planning, exploring tools and methodologies of sensory design and experiences in urban living. G+W's works have been awarded prizes as well as published and exhibited widely, including a monographic exhibition Excepto 21, Active Cartographies, at the Fundación Cultural COAM (2008).
Situated at the nexus of academia and practice, Izabela's research focuses on the reception and production of spatial atmospheres and urban ambiances, exploring the inextricable relation between atmosphere and place-making and its affective, environmental, societal and political significance.
Over the last 20 years, Izabela's scholarly work and teaching – developed both individually and collectively – has covered fields and topics such as questions of perception and representation, somatic practices, technical mediation and the process of reflecting on and developing architecture by means of experimentation in the intersection of diverse disciplines and art forms.
Izabela's work has been presented, published and exhibited internationally, including, among others, the recent exhibition and forum ‘Cartographies of Imagination’ at OmVed Gardens, London (2021), 'Works+Words Biennale of Artistic Research in Architecture' at the The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation in Copenhagen (2019), the Spanish Pavilion Exhibition '#Becoming' at the XVI Venice Architecture Biennale (2018).
She has taught undergraduate, graduate as well as postgraduate courses in Architecture and Interior Design, and has been invited as a guest critic, lecturer and examiner to a number of institutions.
Her teaching has primarily focused on design methodologies, representation, critical writing and professional practice. Prior to joining the University of Reading, she taught at Arkitektskolen Aarhus (AAA), Departamento de Arquitectura Universidad de Alcalá de Henares (UAH), Escuela de Arquitectura Universidad Francisco de Vitoria (UFV), Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca Campus de Madrid (UPSAM), and Instituto Europeo di Design Madrid (IEDM). She has also been a visiting lecturer in Energy and Sustainability at a postgraduate professional programme of Advanced Studies in Collective Housing run by ETSAM UPM and ETH Zürich.
Since 2017, building on the previous research and following G+W's ethos, Izabela has been developing a project of 'Atmospheric Architecture Agency' (AAA). Conceived as a research-based design practice, with a particular interest in trans-disciplinary correspondences and experimental design methodologies, the AAA focuses on both historiography and applied aspects of spatial atmospheres and urban ambiances, exploring their implications for architectural practice and pedagogy.