Massimo Santanicchia is an architect working across disciplines, associate Professor and Program Director in Architecture at the Department of Design and Architecture at the IUA.

 
Massimo's emphasis, both in his work as a teacher and as an architect, has been on the notion of citizenship and architectural education. He has focused especially on how minimal architectural and design interventions can deliver for the public good, foster systemic social and environmental change capable of contributing to the solution of the grand challenges that humanity is facing: climate crisis and social inequality in primis.
 
Massimo holds three Masters degrees. An MArch from IUAV Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia; an MA in Housing and Urbanism from AA Architectural Association, School of Architecture in London; and a MSc in Regional Urban Planning Studies from LSE London School of Economics and Political Science.
 
His research subject areas include citizenship, systems thinking, and architectural education specifically how schools can help building collaboration and activism into their curricula.
 

Research leave 

Massimo was on research leave from August 23rd until December 19th in 2018, working on his PhD, with a focus on the pedagogies of architectural education with special interest on the 16 schools of architecture that are part of the Nordic Baltic Academy of Architecture network- NBAA. 
 
During his sabbatical Massimo interviewed over fifty people from the 16 schools of architecture in 8 different countries including deans, teachers, and students reflecting together on the state of architectural education in Northern Europe.
 

Four main questions

 
“In my PhD research I want to investigate whether there are main differences in the teaching/learning of architecture across the north, and also how the education of an architect contributes further on in shaping its profession.”
 
Four main questions were at the base of the investigation:
 
-What is it the first thing that we should teach in a school of architecture?
-What are the main skills that students should acquire at the completion of their architectural education?
-How should these skills be taught? What pedagogies are most appropriate or likely to be?
-How the education of an architect can be of social relevance.
 

Milestones

 
The peer-reviewed article: “Systems Thinking and Systems Feeling in Architectural Education” published by Architectural Publisher B and the Nordic Baltic Academy of Architecture in October 2018 in the book “Formation, Architectural Education in a Nordic Perspective” edited by Elise Lorentsen and Kristine Annabell Torp.
 
Contribution to the EAAE Education Academy 6th workshop: Educating the Educators. Organised by the School of Architecture, UPV Universitat Politècnica de València in October 2018.
 
Presentation of the peer-reviewed paper: “Citizenship Pedagogy: Building Collaboration and Activism into Architectural Curricula” at the conference named: „Educational Architecture - Challenges of Change" at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University in Vilnius”, in November 2018.
 
Participation in the workshop FormLab on Architecture Education at NTNU School of Architecture in Trondheim on the 14 of December 2018.
 
The peer-reviewed article called: “Becoming Citizen Architects: A Case Study of "Streets of Reykjavik 2010", which will be published in 2019 in the Irish Journal called Building Material. 
 
Oral presentation in Hugarflug, the Iceland University of the Arts annual research conference, February 16th 2019 and Sneiðmynd with his lecture Architecture in the Chthulucene 9th April 2019.
 
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