Lorenza Baroncelli

Lorenza Baroncelli (1981) is an Italian architect, urban planner, urban regeneration theorist and curator. She is currently Director of the Department of Contemporary Architecture and Design at MAXXI, National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome, Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Vienna (TU Wien) and teaches at the Master of Art at Luiss University in Rome. She was artistic director of the Milan Triennale from 2018 to 2022 under the Boeri presidency. Under her direction, in addition to coordinating artistic, communication and fundraising initiatives, the first permanent Museum of Italian Design curated by Joseph Grima and the XXII International Exhibition entitled Broken Nature: Design that takes on human survival curated by Paola Antonelli, Senior curator of Design at MoMa, were inaugurated. From 2015 to 2018 she was Councillor for Urban Regeneration, International Projects and Relations, Territorial Marketing and Urban Furniture in Mantua. Between 2015 and 2016 she was Associate special projects at the Serpentine Galleries in London, where she was coordinator of the architecture program. She was also an advisor on urban and cultural strategies for Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, and Erion Veliaj, Mayor of Tirana, for whom she worked with Stefano Boeri on the drafting of the new Tirana Master Plan. In 2015 she was Scientific Director of the exhibition “15 Rooms” at the Long Museum in Shanghai curated by Klaus Biesenbach (Director of MoMA Ps1), Hans Ulrich Obrist Director of Serpentine Galleries) and designed by Herzog & de Meuron. In January 2015 he founded in Genoa (Italy), together with Joseph Grima, Antonio Ottomanelli, Marco Ferrari and Elisa Pasqual, “White Hole” a remotely controlled micro-gallery that combines the strategies of art practice and journalism to investigate and document the forces – visible and invisible – that shape contemporary society and landscape. In 2014, she curated with Hans Ulrich Obrist the Swiss Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale directed by Rem Koolhaas, which featured artists and architects such as Herzog and de Meuron, Atelier Bow-Wow, Elizabeth Diller, Tino Sehgal, Olafur Eliasson, Philippe Parreno, Dominique Gonzalez- Foester, Carsten Holler, Ko Joeng-a and Liam Gillick. In 2013 she was Coordinator of the master’s program in Urban Visions and Architectural Design at the Domus Academy in Milan. From 2011 to 2012 she directed Giancarlo Mazzanti’s architecture studio in Colombia, working on the design of several public buildings as part of the program promoted by Sergio Fajardo, mayor of Medellin, for the regeneration of public spaces as a means of reducing organized crime in Medellin. Between 2009 and 2011 she worked with Stefano Boeri on several research and urban planning projects and in particular on the development of the Concept Plan for Expo Milano 2015 and on research promoted by the Habitaçao Secretariat of São Paulo on the transformation policies of informal settlements in the world. She graduated with honors from the University of Rome3 with a thesis on the relationship between the development of the city of Bogotá (Colombia) and the presence of armed conflict. Her articles have been published in several international magazines such as Domus Magazine, Abitare, Huffington Post, the New York Times and she has given public lectures in England, Italy, Albania, China, and Brazil.