Valerio Franzone

Valerio Franzone, Ph.D., is an architect, researcher, educator, and founder of the New York- and Rome-based architectural design and research office OCHAP | Office for Cohabitation Processes. OCHAP works at the intersection of architecture, humanity, and nature to foster the built environment’s relational and sustainable character by investigating architecture’s limits, potentialities, and roles. OCHAP develops architecture’s cohabitation potential to oppose individualistic and exploitative approaches by understanding the ecological, cultural, social, economic, technological, and political processes involved. OCHAP rethinks architecture’s status quo to tackle the urgencies of societies and ecosystems and envision other possible futures.

Alongside professional practice, Valerio curates a series of interdisciplinary and interpractice conversations with designers, scholars, activists, and curators on architecture’s role in tackling the current societal and environmental urgencies it is participating in, published in various international magazines. He has lectured at various institutions, including TU Delft, GAM in Turin, Università IUAV di Venezia, and the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica in Barcelona. His projects have won prizes in international competitions and have been presented in several exhibitions, including the 7th, 11th, and 14th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. His projects and texts appear in international magazines such as Abitare, AD Architectural Design, A+U, Detail, Domus, KoozArch, PIN–UP Magazine, The Architect’s Newspaper, and Volume.

Valerio teaches design studios at Columbia University GSAPP and Michael Graves College School of Public Architecture at Kean University, and previously at the Facoltà di Architettura di Ascoli Piceno, UNICAM. He has served as a guest critic in multiple schools of architecture, including Bard College, Barnard College, Cornell University, Parsons, Pratt Institute, and Syracuse University.

Valerio is a licensed architect in the UK (RIBA, ARB) and Italy (OAR). He holds a Ph.D. in Architecture from the “Villard d’Honnecourt” International Doctorate in Architecture at Università IUAV di Venezia, and a Master’s in Architecture from the Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Facoltà di Architettura di Valle Giulia. He co-founded the design groups 2A+P and nicole_fvr, the office 2A+P Architettura, and served as Managing Editor of the architecture magazine KoozArch.