#ItalyPeachy Annabelle Selldorf discusses her human-centred approach to architecture at Cersaie
Annabelle Selldorf will be guest speaker at Cersaie on Thursday, 24 September at 2.30 pm at ‘The Square’, within the Bologna Exhibition Centre. The conference, organised in collaboration with the architecture magazine Platform, forms part of the ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ Cersaie’s cultural programme.
Annabelle Selldorf is the Principal at Selldorf Architects, the internationally acclaimed architectural practice she founded in New York in 1988. Since its inception, the practice has developed a design philosophy deeply rooted in the principles of humanism. As a result, its architecture comes fully to life and achieves its true purpose through the people who inhabit and use the spaces it creates.
Selldorf Architects has extensive expertise in the delivery of complex cultural projects and has recently completed the expansion and renovation of The Frick Collection, the National Gallery in London and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. In May this year, Selldorf Architects, together with its partner practice ‘Studios Architecture’, won the international competition for the Louvre Nouvelle Renaissance project. The first major redevelopment of the Louvre Museum in more than forty years, the scheme includes a new museum entrance and a dedicated gallery for the Mona Lisa. Current projects also include a 4,650-square-metre extension to the Art Gallery of Ontario and the restoration of The Wallace Collection in London.
Born and raised in Cologne, Germany, Annabelle Selldorf earned a Bachelor of Architecture from the Pratt Institute and a Master of Architecture from Syracuse University. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and serves on the boards of the Chinati Foundation, the Architectural League of New York, the World Monuments Fund and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which honoured her with its prestigious Award in Architecture in 2014. She received the AIA New York Medal of Honor in 2016 and, in 2025, was named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. She also received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the Pratt Institute.
