Biographical notes

Sebastiano Raneri, Interior Designer, has worked as a freelancer since 1984, mainly in the fields of Interior Design, Design, Urban Design, Renovation and Residential Building Designer, Hospitality, Religious and Healthcare Facilities, both in Italy and abroad.
His profession is enriched by project research on the removal of architectural barriers, on the functional adjustment of social and hospitality facilities, with a particular attention to materials and how to mix them.
He appreciates constructive professional dialogue, because he considers it to be the necessary means to professional and cultural growth; because of this, he has taken part in several international competitions for projects and ideas, which he has won many times.
Over the course of his career, many of his works have been featured and showcased in publications, because of the attention to detail and the main element of all his designs, namely “Design for all”.
He favors training events and any chance of professional dialogue, both in Italy and abroad, taking part in conferences, congresses, workshops and in many juror panels for competitions all over the world.
He was also:
- National President of the Italian Association of Interior Designers
- Member of Colap’s (Coordination of freelancers associations) Board of directors
- Member of the Test commission for professional habilitation of the Ministry for Education
- Global President of the International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers, headquartered in New York City
Now he:
- Actively works with several magazines for architecture and design, as well as industry companies at a global level
- Works with POLIDesign, of which he was Vice President (Consortium of Milan’s Politecnico)
- As IFI’s Past President, he coordinates Interior Design Ambassadors in the world as well as the Education Portfolio for future Interior Designers

Biographical notes

Sebastiano Raneri, Interior Designer, has worked as a freelancer since 1984, mainly in the fields of Interior Design, Design, Urban Design, Renovation and Residential Building Designer, Hospitality, Religious and Healthcare Facilities, both in Italy and abroad.
His profession is enriched by project research on the removal of architectural barriers, on the functional adjustment of social and hospitality facilities, with a particular attention to materials and how to mix them.
He appreciates constructive professional dialogue, because he considers it to be the necessary means to professional and cultural growth; because of this, he has taken part in several international competitions for projects and ideas, which he has won many times.
Over the course of his career, many of his works have been featured and showcased in publications, because of the attention to detail and the main element of all his designs, namely “Design for all”.
He favors training events and any chance of professional dialogue, both in Italy and abroad, taking part in conferences, congresses, workshops and in many juror panels for competitions all over the world.

He was also:
- National President of the Italian Association of Interior Designers
- Member of Colap’s (Coordination of freelancers associations) Board of directors
- Member of the Test commission for professional habilitation of the Ministry for Education
- Global President of the International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers, headquartered in New York City

Now he:
- Actively works with several magazines for architecture and design, as well as industry companies at a global level
- Works with POLIDesign, of which he was Vice President (Consortium of Milan’s Politecnico)
- As IFI’s Past President, he coordinates Interior Design Ambassadors in the world as well as the Education Portfolio for future Interior Designers

Biographical notes

Richard Rogers is the 2007 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate, the recipient of the RIBA Gold Medal in 1985 and winner of the 1999 Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Medal. He is also winner of the 2000 Praemium Imperiale Prize for Architecture, the 2006 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (La Biennale di Venezia) and the 2007 Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal. Richard Rogers was awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 1986, knighted in 1991 and made a member of the House of Lords (the upper house of the UK Parliament) in 1996. In 2008 he was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour.

In 1995, he was the first architect invited to give the BBC Reith Lectures – a series entitled ‘Cities for a Small Planet’ – and in 1998 was appointed by the Deputy Prime Minister to chair the UK Government’s Urban Task Force on the state of English cities and their ability to provide 4 million new homes as well as their potential for revitalisation. The Urban Task Force brought together academics, planners, developers, architects and politicians and its highly influential report, “Towards an Urban Renaissance”, was published in 1999. It was the first government report to advocate a reuse of city centres and derelict land rather than suburban sprawl.

During 1980s and 90s, Richard was an advisor to President Francois Mitterand’s Grands Projets programme in Paris, and from 2000 – 03 he advised the Mayor of Barcelona’s Urban Strategies Council. From 2001 to 2008 he was chief advisor on Architecture and Urbanism to the first Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In this role, Richard formed the Architecture and Urbanism Unit to promote the use of brownfield sites, public space enhancements and better masterplanning across the capital. He also advised Livingstone’s successor, Boris Johnson, and continues to be a prominent advocate for better urban planning and for the development of the compact city as the only sustainable way to accommodate an increasingly urban population.

Richard has a wealth of experience in urban masterplanning, with major schemes in London, Berlin, Florence, New York and Shanghai Pudong. With Ivan Harbour, he has recently worked on a major masterplan for Barangaroo South - a mixed-use waterside development in Sydney, Australia - and participated in the Greater Paris project, which looks at the future of the city as a more integrated metropolitan region as it faces the social and environmental challenges of the 21st century.

The idea of the piazza is Richard’s life-long passion. He understands that cities are made by the people that live in them, not by the buildings themselves, and it is the life between buildings that is important, “Cities are a stage where people perform and buildings are the sets that frame the performance. A place for all”.

Collaboration too lies at the heart of his work: “Architecture is too complex to be solved by any one person…I enjoy the dynamic that flows when different disciplines, from sociology to mathematics, engineering to philosophy, come together to create solutions. This integration creates an ethos that best serves, and an aesthetic that best symbolises, the modern world. No-one is more integral to the clarity of a project than an enlightened client.”
R
ichard was Chairman of the Tate Gallery and Deputy Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, and is currently an Honorary Trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Trustee of Doctors of the World UK and President of The National Communities Resource Centre.

He has recently published a memoir of ‘A Place for All People’ which documents his life, projects and ideas for a better society.

Born in Porto, 1972, Camilo Rebelo graduated in Architecture by the “Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto” (FAUP) in 1996. From 1994 to 1999 collaborates with Eduardo Souto Moura and Herzog & de Meuron. In 2000 establishes his own office.
Awarded author, namely with the first prize in the international competition for the Museum of Art and Archaeology of Vale do Côa (2004-2009) in co-authorship with Tiago Pimentel, later awarded with the Bauwelt Prize 2013.
Also awarded with an honorable mention in the international competition for the Museum of Modern Art of Warsaw (2007), and recently awarded with Baku UIA International Award for the Ktima House in Greece (2017) both projects in co-authorship with Susana Martins.
Camilo Rebelo lectured at Faculdade de Arquitectura do Porto and as invited professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne together with Eduardo Souto de Moura, at Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura Universidad de Navarra, at Accademia di architettura di Mendrisio and currently at Politecnico di Milano.

Biographical notes

Sarah Robinson is an architect who has practiced independently in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 17 years. Her work has been nationally and internationally recognized for its sensitivity to both human and ecological needs.

She studied Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Magna cum Laude) and the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, drawing at the Art Students’ League in New York and traveled the globe before joining the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture where she earned her M.Arch. She participates in Public Architecture’s one percent program and was Architect-in-Residence in San Francisco’s public schools. She was the founding chair of the FLWSA Board of Trustees where she remains a member.

Her book, Nesting: Body, Dwelling, Mind (William Stout Publishers, 2011) is informed by her training in phenomenology and her experience as a practicing architect. The research for this book inspired Minding Design: Neuroscience, Design Education and the Imagination, an international symposium she created and organized that gathered leading architects and neuroscientists to explore how breakthroughs in neuroscience enable us design in a way that supports our minds, our bodies and our social and cultural evolution. Together with Juhani Pallasmaa, she is co-editing the book, Minding Design, that builds upon the dialogue opened in this symposium.