Interview with Elena Manferdini

This episode features Elena Manferdini, the recipient of the ICON award at the 2019 LA Design Festival. This interview was recorded at the event at Row DTLA. Elena is the Graduate Chair at Sci-Arc and principal of Atelier Manferdini. Elena’s striking exuberance, charisma, and rigor is completely evident in her work, which ranges in scale from product design, to graphic facades and entire buildings. Her process often incorporates cutting edge technology as an integral part of the design, and she even includes augmented reality features in the work. Having grown up in Italy and received a degree in engineering before studying architecture at UCLA, Elena combines her skills and sensibilities as an artist, architect, and engineer to produce stunning, award-winning works. I really enjoyed speaking with Elena, and admire her even more after our wonderfully candid and intellectual conversation.