Francesca Romana Forlini is an architect, Ph.D., educator, and editor. She teaches history and theory of interior design and architecture as Visiting Assistant Professor at New York Tech. Francesca previously held the positions of lecturer and researcher at Parsons The New School, University of Hertfordshire, Middlesex University, Harvard University, and the Royal College of Art (RCA). Her research has been presented in various international conferences and published it in several journals and magazines, most recently on Urban Planning, Interiority, Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture. She was the first chief editor of KoozArch magazine and contributor and editor of the AIA-awarded journal Oblique, Critical Conservation Vol. 1. She is a Fulbrighter and an alumna of the Royal College of Art, where she completed her Ph.D. in architectural history and theory supported by the SNF STEAM Scholarship. She holds a Master in Design Studies from Harvard Graduate School of Design, and is a Sapienza University alumna.

Abstract
According to numerous American scholars Lauretta Vinciarelli (1943–2011) left an indelible mark on the history of art and architecture. Roman architect, Vinciarelli earned a Ph.D. in architecture at Sapienza University in Rome (1971) and settled a few years earlier in New York, in 1969. It was in the American metropolis that she was able to distinguish herself, she was indeed among the first women who taught design studios at Columbia University (starting from 1978), she was also a faculty professor at Pratt Institute and Rice University among other prestigious American universities. Vinciarelli was also the first woman whose drawings were acquired by the Architecture and Design department of MoMa (1974), and her work is part of the permanent collections of numerous important museums, where it has been exhibited as well. Throughout her prolific artistic career she played a significant role as collaborator in the architectural and design works of the artist Donald Judd. Her intellectual activity, as well as her creative contributions stand out for the strong Italian, Roman imprint of her spatial and theoretical investigations. Both her typological studies, her landscape explorations and the “anti-Modernist” grid that generates her evanescent architectures of water and paper are imbued with colours and shapes reminiscent of her Italian past and roots. This paper will thoroughly investigate the contribution of Lauretta Vinciarelli, a Roman architect and artist in New York. Testimonies from colleagues and friends will be incorporated, as well as archival material from the institutions where she worked.

Image: Lauretta Vinciarelli, Per Ilaria IV, Windsor and Newton watercolor on paper (1993). Scanned from Clear light: The architecture of Lauretta Vinciarelli. Hong Kong: Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers, 2015. Page 117.