about
Designing cities changed the way I see the world
For more than twenty-five years, I have worked across Europe and Southeast Asia, designing master plans, ecological districts and landscape strategies.
Over time, I realised that cities cannot be understood through isolated solutions. They are living systems shaped by relationships between nature, mobility, public space and urban form.
Today my work combines practice, research, writing and education around a single ambition: helping create cities that are healthier, more resilient and more meaningful.
My Journey
Twenty-five years ago, I began my career in Italy studying architecture and urban design at the Politecnico di Milano, where I later completed a Ph.D. in Urban Design.
Soon after, I moved to Vietnam. Working in one of the fastest-growing urban regions in the world completely changed the way I looked at cities. The extraordinary speed of transformation revealed both the opportunities and the limits of conventional planning.
Designing projects across Europe and Southeast Asia taught me that ecological quality is never created by individual elements alone. It emerges from the way urban systems interact.
That experience gradually shaped the ideas that later became the foundation of The Ecological City and the Ecological Diagnostic Framework (EDF).
WHAT CHANGED MY THINKING
MILAN
Learning to read the city
Studying architecture and urban design taught me how cities evolve through history, culture and public life. It provided the theoretical foundations that still guide my work today.
VIETNAM
Learning through transformation
Working on rapidly expanding cities revealed the complexity of urban growth. It showed me that ecological thinking must become a structural part of planning rather than an environmental addition.
the alps
Learning from nature
Landscape taught me that natural systems never function in isolation. Every element depends on countless relationships. Cities should be designed in exactly the same way.
Why I Wrote The Ecological City
After more than two decades working on projects of every scale and context, I realised that most ecological assessments focused on individual indicators rather than on the relationships that actually shape urban performance.
This led me to develop the Ecological Diagnostic Framework (EDF)—a systems-based methodology for understanding how mobility, soil, water, vegetation, public space and urban form work together.
The EDF became the central framework of my book The Ecological City, bringing together years of professional practice, research and observation into a practical method for analysing and designing cities as living systems.
