Andrea’s research agenda is organised around two interconnected lines of inquiry. The first examines architecture as a site of social, technical, and political production; the second develops a critical framework for understanding the relationship between architectural design, environment, and sustainability. Together, these lines define a broader investigation into how architecture mediates between cultural meanings, institutional structures, technological systems, and ecological conditions.

The first line of research focuses on the relational value of architecture as a field of hybridisation, negotiation, and conflict. It studies how design processes translate cultural, political, and social forces into built form, and how architecture participates in the production of collective identities, symbolic orders, and spatial regimes. This work moves across theory, criticism, and historical analysis, examining the ways in which infrastructures, urban morphologies, landscapes, and formal systems embody tensions between global circulation and local specificity.

This agenda has been developed through case studies that explore architecture as a contested cultural object. These include research on the Tokyo National Stadium as a site of conflict between globalised architectural production and local urban and cultural values; on the infra-ordinary dimensions of everyday space and their techno-cultural construction; and on the ideological reproduction of social ideals through urban form, memory, and nostalgia. Additional projects on borders, refugee camps, and liminal spaces extend this inquiry toward conditions in which architecture intersects directly with citizenship, bare life, and asymmetrical geographies of power.

The second line of research examines the relationship between architecture and sustainability through critical and theoretical lenses. It addresses architecture as an applied field of responsibility, one in which design must respond not only to functional and technological demands but also to wider ecological, political, and ethical transformations. Within this framework, the built environment is understood as a techno-political ecosystem shaped by the legacies of industrial modernity, the digital turn, and the conceptual challenges of the Anthropocene.

Current and forthcoming work develops these two lines through monographic research, journal articles, edited volumes, invited symposia, and international collaborations. Taken together, this research agenda aims to contribute to contemporary architectural discourse by reconnecting theory and design, and by articulating forms of critical inquiry capable of addressing architecture’s role within urgent social and environmental change.

Andrea is regularly invited by external academic institution as lecturer, teacher and external examiner, including the University of Salford, Oxford Brookes University, Politecnico di Milano Department of Architecture and Urban Studies and the PhD School, Manchester School of Architecture, Loughborough University and Politecnico di Torino Department of Architecture and Urban Studies and PhD school, the Institute Philosophy and Social Theory University of Belgrade.

The most recent publications include:

Edited Books

Toward and Architectural Theory for Sustainability, Routledge, London 2026

Co-editors: Richard Brook, Chrisitan Gänshirt, Francesca Zanotto

Refereed Book Chapters

‘The Camp as a Provisional Borderland: Between Space of Exception and Suspended Lives’, in The Architecture of Borderlands, Routledge, London 2026

‘Towards a General Introduction’, in Toward an Architectural Theory for Sustainability, Routledge, London 2026

‘Patterns Redefinition in Beijing Qianmen Kengo Kuma Office in Damochang 220 Courtyard House’, in Technology and Culture in the Asia-Pacific Region, Chinese University of Hong Kong and University of Nottingham Ningbo, Springer, Singapore 2024

‘I villaggi urbani di Ottorini Marcolini, o il posto delle fragole dell’ingegnere di Dio’, in Times and Challenges in Urban History, AISU International – Italian Association of Urban History, Torino 2023

‘Travelling between Venice and Manhattan. Manfredo Tafuri’s early experiences in America’, in The Italian Presence in Post-war America 1949-1972, Mimesis Edizioni, Milano 2023

‘Hiroshi Hara: Wallpapers. Transcriptions About Spatial Concepts and Modes’, in Products of Reflexive Design, Jovis Verlag, Berlin 2023

Selected Refereed Articles

‘The Structuralist Debate. Conceptual Architecture (1969-1974) between Formalism and Ideology’, in Footprint, Delft Architecture Theory Journal, 37, Delft 2025

‘The Right to Beauty. An Interview with Álvaro Siza’, in Khōrein. Journal for Architecture and Philosophy, co-author Pierre-Alain Croset, III-1, Belgrade 2025

‘Against Geometry: Architecture in Continuum. An Interview with Kengo Kuma’, in Khōrein. Journal for Architecture and Philosophy, co-author Aya Jazaierly, III-2, Belgrade 2025

The Aesthetics of Sustainability’, in ‘Die Architekt’, 4, Berlin 2024

‘The Japan National Stadium. Between Architectural Bigness and Urban Smallness’, co-author Aya Jazaierly, in The Plan Journal, 2024, 5-1, Bologna 2024

‘An Everyday Dream of a Social Experiment’, in GAM Graz Architecture Magazine, 20, Faculty of Architecture, Graz University, Graz 2024

Refereed Conference Proceedings

‘Spatializing the Bare Life’, in MCCT Midlands Conference in Critical Thought 2025, University of Derby

‘Re-Defining the Generic City’, in MCCT Midlands Conference in Critical Thought 2024, Centre for Policy, Citizenship and Society + Department of Social and Political Sciences, Nottingham Trent University

Book Reviews

Jul 2026, in The Plan Journal, 11-2, Bologna, ‘’Our First Thirty Years. On Corvino + Multari’, by Pierre-Alain Croset, Marsilio Arte, Venice 2025’

May 2024, in Khōrein. Journal for Architecture and Philosophy, II-1, Belgrade, ‘’Architecture Constructed: Notes on a Discipline’, by Mark Jarzombek, Bloomsbury Press 2023’

Dec 2023, in Architectural History, 66, SAHGB Cambridge, ‘’The Common Camp. Architecture of Power and Resistance in Israel-Palestine’, Irit Katz, University Minnesota Press 2022’

May 2023, in GAM Graz Architecture Magazine, 19, Faculty of Architecture, Graz University, ‘’Architectural Principles on the Age of Fraud’, by Branko Mitrović, ORO Editions 2022’

Periodical Peer Reviewer

Ri-Vista. Research for Landscape Architecture, University of Florence, 2022, 2025

Ardeth, Politecnico di Torino, 2025

Project:Research - Oporto School of Architecture Research Journal, 2025

Histories of Postwar Architecture, University of Bologna, 2023

The Plan Journal, Bologna, 2023

Rivista di Estetica, Università di Torino, 2018

Handbook of Research on Cultural Influences on Architecture, IGI Global, Hershey, PA, US 2016

Institutions Peer Reviewer

European Commission, European Research Council, HORIZON Europe Call Referee 2024

Books and Journals Presentations

Andrea participated in several books and Journals presentations, including at the Biennale Architettura 2025, at The Parsons School of Design, The New School University, New York 2024, at the Politecnico di Milano PhD School 2024, at the Architectural Association, London 2024.

In 2000 Andrea established his design practice in Italy, which he ran until 2021, working for both private and public clients, when he moved to the UK to become a Registered Architect with the ARB and a Chartered Architect with the RIBA.
For over 20 years he has been involved in all stages of the design process, from pre-design through to site activities, designing projects with a focus on the social and cultural context of the project.

With his office, he has designed and renewed for more that 20 years residential building, planned urban regeneration plans, new social care centre, public first aid centre at the former industrial sites, several Italian social housing and housing refurbishments, renovation and extension of town halls, extension of cemetery, regeneration of former industrial wasteland into a service centre and library, renovation of the historic complex and listed buildings, feasibility studies for public parks, cycle paths and various residential areas, national and international competitions, the redevelopment of a former tobacco factory, a police station, a preliminary project for the extension of a parish oratory, a local museum of oil production, a new secondary school complex, social housing in an integrated regeneration plan, on behalf of the public authorities, he has supervised and verified the technical and economic evaluation of projects presented by private owners for access to public loans.