(b. 1988, IT) is an architect working across different scales and formats. Engaging with both commissioned and self-initiated projects, as well as collaborations, her work explores architecture and the built environment through building, photography, drawing, and writing. The practice is focused on examining and imagining architecture in relation to its broader cultural and physical context—the landscape, the city, their histories, various forms of representation, and their spatial implications. It follows a process that is both analytical and guided by intuition, carefully considering the existing and its possibilities while remaining grounded in an embodied experience of the present conditions. Simona studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano (B.Sc. with Honors, 2010) and the Technical University of Vienna and received her Master’s degree at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (M.Eng.,2014) as a Monbukagakusho Fellow. She completed a Master in Fine Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts (MFA, 2022). She has worked internationally with the Tokyo-based studio Atelier Bow-Wow, where she led several projects from concept to completion including the Search Library in Muharraq, Bahrain, installations and exhibition designs at various venues and institutions such as the Cultural Center of Chicago, Harvard GSD, La Biennale di Venezia, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the MAXXI Museum in Rome, and the Triennale di Milano. Alongside her practice, between 2017–2023 Simona has been teaching and researching at the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich, Chair of Architectural Behaviorology (Prof. Momoyo Kaijima), where she taught design studios and co-authored the book "Swiss Window Journeys: Architectural Field Notes" (gta Verlag, 2023). She was assistant curator of the Japan Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale (2018). Her work has been awarded by international competitions such as Europan and has received grants from the Austrian Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (MEXT), the European Union, and the City of Zurich. Recently, she was architect-in-residence at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles with the MAK Schindler Scholarship and at the Charles Moore Foundation in Santa Monica.
Here is an archive of recent works. Get in touch by Email & Instagramis an architect working across different scales and formats. Engaging with both commissioned and self-initiated projects, as well as collaborations, her work explores architecture and the built environment through building, photography, drawing, and writing. The practice is focused on examining and imagining architecture in relation to its broader cultural and physical context—the landscape, the city, their histories, various forms of representation, and their spatial implications. It follows a process that is both analytical and guided by intuition, carefully considering the existing and its possibilities while remaining grounded in an embodied experience of the present conditions.
Here is an archive of recent works. Get in touch by Email & Instagram Garden in Progress
Making Mountains
Making Mountains is a workshop unit within the the Vienna Architecture Summer School, in which we proposed to look at the Deponie Rautenweg, a large landfill in the outskirt of Vienna. Disguised as a natural landscape inhabited by grazing goats, the landfill is in fact a sophisticated infrastructure and constructed pile of debris that is expected to soon reach a monumental height of 75 meters. The workshop was envisioned as an iterative process of layering recycled construction residues to physically re-enact the stacked structure of the landfill. Students were asked to add one layer per day, discussing the materials properties and their ecological implications. The week-long activity was framed by walks in the landfill, readings and discussions with the aim to articulate the phisical experience of the workshop to reflect on the relationship between waste disposal, landscape properties, and architectural agency in the circulation of materials.
Location: Vienna Architecture Summer School, AT
Year: 2022
Workshop Tutors: Simona Ferrari, Jakob Sellaoui
Participants: Cara Domscheit, Jana Kopp, Thijs Vleeschouwer














