Elena Manferdini

Wednesday April 3, 2019 , All Day
elena

Elena Manferdini, principal and owner of Atelier Manferdini, has over fifteen years of professional experience in architecture, art, design, and education. She graduated from the University of Civil Engineering (Bologna, Italy) and later received her Master of Architecture and Urban Design from the University of California Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA). In 2004 she founded Atelier Manferdini in Venice, CA. The office has completed projects in the US, Europe and Asia. In 2018 Atelier Manferdini completed a 8 stories façade for the Hermitage parking structure in Florida and the gate for La Peer Hotel in West Hollywood. In 2017 her firm was awarded the interior artwork for the Bethesda station of the Purple Line in Washington and her façade for the Alexander Montessori School in Miami was awarded the AIA Miami design award. In 2016 Atelier Manferdini was one of 4 finalists for the façade design of the new METRO facilities in Down Town Los Angeles. She recently completed the interior lobby and outdoor open space artworks for the Zev Yaroslavsky San Fernando Valley Family Support Center of LA County. She designed and built the entryway for the Hubert Humphrey Hospital in Down Town Los Angeles, along with two commercial stores on Abbott Kinney (Venice CA), an art gallery in Hollywood, an art pavilion for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. In 2012 she remodeled a 3 floors cruise boat in Kyoto (Japan). In addition to art and architectural project, Elena Manferdini has worked on several museum installations and object designs; through the years she has collaborated with internationally renowned companies such as: swarovski, Sephora, Driade, MTV, Fiat, Nike, Alessi, Ottaviani, Moroso, Valentino, Arktura, Lerival and BMW. Her artwork received the prestigious 2016 Public Art North America award and is part of the permanent collections of SFMoMA and LACMA. In addition to that Elena Manferdini was awarded the 2013 COLA Fellowship given by City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs to support the production of original artwork. In 2013 she received a Graham Award for architecture, the 2013 ACADIA Innovative Research Award of Excellence. In 2011 she was one of the recipients of the prestigious annual grants from the United States Artists (USA) in the category of architecture and design. Finally her Blossom design for Alessi received the Good Design Award in 2011. Elena Manferdini’s work has appeared internationally in books, professional journals and reviews. She has been featured in several publications: Domus, New York Times, Elle, Vogue, ID, Icon, Form, Contemporary, Metropolis, and Architectural Design are selected examples. In 2013 a monograph on the firm’s work "Elena Manferdini" was published by Equalbooks. She frequently lectures, and her work has been exhibited internationally in both architecture and art museums. Selected examples are the Art Institute of Chicago, LACMA and MOCA in Los Angeles, MAXXI in Rome, MAK center in Vienna. In 2006 Ms. Manferdini was invited to design the West Coast Pavilion representing the USA at the Beijing Biennale in the Chinese Millennium Museum. In 2008 and 2010, she curated the West Coast USA session of the Beijing Biennale exhibition. She has lectured widely, including at MIT, Princeton, GSD, UCLA, USC, UIC, UCB, Seika University, Tsinghua University and Bauhaus. Since 2003 Elena has been part of the design faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where she is now the Graduate Programs Chair. Throughout the years Elena has been acknowledged with prestigious appointments such as the Howard Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of California Berkeley (UCB) and various Visiting Professor Positions at Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania and Seika University. In 2013 she was selected as recipient for the Educator of the Year presidential award given by the AIA Los Angeles.