Annabelle Selldorf’s humanist approach to architecture

(July 2026) – Annabelle Selldorf will be a guest speaker at Cersaie on Thursday, 24 September at 2.30 pm in The Square at the Bologna Exhibition Centre. Her lecture, organised in collaboration with the architecture magazine Platform, is part of Cersaie’s “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” cultural programme.

Annabelle Selldorf is the founding principal of Selldorf Architects, an internationally acclaimed architectural practice established in New York in 1988. Since its inception, the practice has developed a design philosophy deeply rooted in humanist principles, an approach that brings architectural spaces to life and allows them to achieve their fullest expression through the people who inhabit and use them.

Selldorf Architects has particular expertise in complex cultural projects and has recently completed the expansion and renovation of The Frick Collection, the National Gallery in London and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. In May this year, Selldorf Architects, in partnership with Studios Architecture, won the international competition for the Louvre Nouvelle Renaissance project. The first major redevelopment of the Louvre Museum in more than forty years, the project includes a new museum entrance and a dedicated gallery for the Mona Lisa. Projects currently under way also include a 4,650 m² extension to the Art Gallery of Ontario and the restoration of The Wallace Collection in London.

Born and raised in Cologne, Germany, Annabelle Selldorf holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the Pratt Institute and a Master of Architecture from Syracuse University. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and serves on the boards of the Chinati Foundation, the Architectural League of New York, the World Monuments Fund and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which honoured her with its prestigious Award in Architecture in 2014. She received the AIA New York Medal of Honor in 2016 and, in 2025, was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. She has also received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the Pratt Institute.

Attendance at the lecture entitles architects to two continuing professional development (CPD) credits. In addition, a visit to the exhibition itself earns a further CPD credit, which can be claimed through self-certification by submitting the admission ticket.