Design is always education. (Enzo Mari)

“All along my professional journey, teaching and practice progressed and evolved hand in hand, constantly feeding and informing each other”

In the last two decades I’ve worked for different art and design higher-ed institutions, in different capacities and within many cultural contexts. I’ve spent the last 9 years at RISD, previously at VCUQ and before that at IED. I’ve been visiting professor at Politecnico di Milano and at University of Bologna. I collaborate extensively with Centro University in Mexico city and done many activities with ISDI in Cuba. Many other istitutions across the globe have welcomed my workshops and invited me to engage with their students. Difficult to mention here the many students and the many projects I’ve helped navigate. However, I can summurize my teaching ethos through three main values:

Empathy, for me, means working towards the creation of meaningful human connections.

Self-determination is about the freedom to work outside a predetermined path or system, always questioning the status quo and constantly challenging mainstream assumptions.

Contextual awareness is the third and last value, which I define as the need to understand the social, political, and economic conditions of specific environments and situations before, or while operating in them.

For the sake of showing in these pages some pics, I’ll pull out just a few works from my students’projects archive. They arent’ in any way exhaustive of the talented individuals I had the chance to accompany in their growth nor representation of any percepted standard.

RISD Seminar 2020 / Decolonizing Dieter Rams’ Good Design Manifesto
Students: Ben Weinmann, Ann Dihn, Carlos Herbozo Vidal, Yuxin Chen

RISD BFA Senior Studio 2017-18
Students: karsten Goodwin, Ryan Smith, David Kessler, Dennis Krawec, Fiona Stolorz, Althea Fyfe, Benjamin Hunt, Carmen Schweizer, Robert Wang

RISD MID Grad Studio1 2017-19
Students: Vara Yang, Ben Wainmann, Tim Stoelting, Christina Johnston, Dave Pittman, Brian Payne

VCUQ MFA Design Studies - Class on Cultural Machines and Performance Design 2014
Students: Othman Khunji, Samreen Zahra, Malaz Elgemiabby

ISDI Product Design Dept - class on Open Design 2013
Students: Osmany Rodriguez, Carla Oraa Calzadilla, Michiel Cornelissen, Raúl Barea, Leandro Luján, Liset Fajardo

IED Master in Design for Sport 2008-09
Students: Diogo Ferreira, Edoardo stocco, Paco Camarena, Santiago Caro, Matteo Straforini, Gina Taha, Marc Santamans, Nick Trahan.