About Her

Bio

Maddalena d’Alfonso was raised by architect parents, which played an important role in her strong identity on the matter, she travelled around the world since a very young age, researching and experiencing architecture in different countries with different cultures. She grew up to be an architect, curator, essayist, and researcher, who also thought these subjects for more than a decade. Qualified Licensed Associate Professor in 2017 - following the doctorate cum laude, in 2004 - she held courses at IADE-Portugal and the Politecnico di Milano-Italy, among many other academic organizations.
It’s not what she does it’s actually how she does it and the reasons behind it that make her unique, she applied her mind frame and perfect ability to combine her knowledge on architecture and museology to conceptualize and design new projects. There is a story behind her point of view in which innovative methods connected to the history and the actuality of the architectural discipline are developed on the inter-disciplinary investigation stem from the theoretical and visual analysis of architecture, art, photography, and landscape.
The architect has done projects for the Fundação Gulbenkian-Portugal, the Fundação Iberê Camargo-Brazil, the MIT Museum in Cambridge-USA, Triennale di Milano and Politecnico di Milano-Italy.

d’Alfonso’s publications include "Two Museums by Àlvaro Siza-Electa, 2009"; "De Chirico. O sentiment from Arquitetura-Camargo, 2011"; "How space transforms art | How Art transforms space-Silvana, 2016" and the book "Warm Modernity-Silvana Editorial, 2016" which has received RED DOT award.

During her professional years, she has accomplished many awards for her vision and successful outcomes, including the Medal of high representation from the Presidency of the Italian Republic for the exhibition “The landscape of rights. Photographing the Italian Constitution” - designed and curated by her, 2017 for Comune di Milano.
When you love what you do, life brings you more opportunities. Her career path crossed a very interesting road which made her who she is today.
It was during her studies that she met professor Nuno Portas in her Erasmus at FAUP in Portugal. Portas was teaching History of Urban Settlements, reporting the inequalities of nowadays conditions. d'Alfonso began to investigate how a good design architecture could provide sustainability for the common goods, public and private, inspired by the commitments of Alvaro Siza SAAL projects.
Then she decided to travel to Brazil wherein 1996 appeared the first projects of bottom-up improvement recovery of the Sao Pulo's Slums. The firm gave her contribution for her disciplinary sector, she got her degree and began a PhD on Exhibit Design on the Museography, the only tool in Architecture to divulge the democratic way of thinking in architecture.
Her educational commitment to redistribution the City Right pushed her to use Photography and Architectural Drawings as the most potent display for a participative and democratic process in the cultural networks.
As an architect, she had the knowledge and passion to pass on and by teaching and writing about it, she has developed the imagination that she believed in, which included many types of research, articles, conference organization and attendances.

Since 2019 the architect has been a Board Member of ICAMT and founded Md’A Design Agency, a cultural event consultancy studio, where they provide production consultancy, creative solutions, and direction to build a design virtue based on sustainable innovative ideas.  She has conceived a coopetitive methodology for professional projects, practices and workshops to develop sustainable thoughts applied to the design and project management in the architectural and cultural world.                  
The architect’s resume demonstrates her professional roles up until today and indicates primary details of whom she had played those roles with and how. She collects visions, knowledge, and people, which makes the story of how she got here, where she is right now, very much worth hearing.

An Architect | A Designer 
A Researcher
A Professor | A Lecturer |A Speaker
A Curator
A Concept Developer | Organizer
A Writer | An Editor