#ChezPeachy #ArchitectPeachy #ItalyPeachy Living the landscape with rigour and lightness: Lina Malfona at Cersaie 2025
At Cersaie 2025, architect Lina Malfona will be a featured guest in the Building, Dwelling, Thinking cultural programme, the cycle of conferences that brings together internationally acclaimed architects and designers to present their projects and visions on contemporary architecture. The event, introduced by architectural historian Fulvio Irace, will take place on Wednesday, 24 September 2025 at 11 a.m. in "The Square" in the Bologna Exhibition Centre.
Malfona's work can be summed up in an architecture that engages in dialogue with the landscape – through suspended arcades and large structures that capture and enhance their surroundings – creating a composition that is both scenic and calibrated for the human eye. It is a perfect mix of spatial freedom and compositional rigour, turning the act of living into a sensory and contemplative experience.
The architect graduated from the Sapienza University of Rome, where she studied under Franco Purini and earned her degree in architecture in 2005. She then went on to complete a PhD and post-doctoral studies in architectural and urban design. From 2008 to 2018, she taught at the Sapienza University and also served as a visiting professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Her research has been supported and recognised by prestigious fellowships, including one in 2015 at the ATCH (Architecture Theory Criticism History) Centre at the University of Queensland in Australia, and another in 2016 at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where she was awarded a Fulbright Research Fellowship and held the position of visiting research professor. Malfona is currently an associate professor of Architectural Design at the University of Pisa, where she founded and runs the Polit(t)ico research laboratory.
She has authored numerous essays on architectural history, theory and criticism. Her recent publications include The Mannerist Phase in Architecture (Routledge, 2025) and Residentialism (Actar, 2021). Her writings have been featured in international architectural journals such as Domus, Log and The Journal of Architecture. Her works have received several awards and have been exhibited in major cultural institutions and museums, including MAXXI in Rome and the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
In 2007, together with Fabio Petrini, she co-founded the firm Malfona Petrini, later joined by Simone Petrini and Giuseppe Malfona. The firm’s research-driven design approach has explored themes of suburban architecture, including the development of a residential “archipelago” in Formello, on the outskirts of Rome.
