Cornell
AAP
Visiting Faculty

Departments

Search

Visiting Faculty

Alessandro Orsini

  • Visiting Critic
Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Department

Contact

Academic Research Areas

  • Adaptive reuse
  • Architectural design
  • Architectural practice
  • Architectural representation
  • Community-based planning and development
  • Drawing

Alessandro Orsini is an architect and cofounding partner of Architensions. His investigations focus on architecture’s political, social, and environmental spatial networks, with a specific interest in the commons and the definition of new modes of collective living. His practice and research are intertwined with teaching, expanding collaborative modes of inquiry to respond to new definitions of ecologies, and spatial ontologies. Alongside practice, Orsini teaches studios at Columbia University GSAPP and has contributed to many publications, including Vesper, Faktur, and PLOT. Orsini received his Master of Architecture summa cum laude at Roma Tre University in Rome and was a visiting scholar at Columbia University GSAPP.

Headshot of Alessandro Orsini.

Academic Research Areas

  • Adaptive reuse
  • Architectural design
  • Architectural practice
  • Architectural representation
  • Community-based planning and development
  • Drawing
  • Geometric sculpture.
  • House on a suburban street.
  • Curved yellow wall with cutout.
  • Model of a building.
  • Architectural illustration of a neighborhood.
  • Gallery installation with building models.
  • Urban plaza with people gathered in small structure.
  • Gallery installation with building models.
  • Architectural illustration of urban street.

The Playground Public Space Installation for the Coachella Music and Art Festival, 2022

House on House Adaptive Reuse and Extension of a Single Family Home, Babylon, 2022

House on House Interior View, 2022

Knolls Co-Living, A Cooperative Housing in Los Angeles, 2020

Reset: Towards the New Commons Research and Exhibition, Center for Architecture, New York 2022

Fragments of Disability Fictions, Project for Chicago Architecture Biennial 2025, in Collaboration with Ignacio Galan, David Gissen, Nick Roseboro

Pavilion Installation for Collective Visions Festival, San Ferdinando, 2023

Architecture As Commoning Practice Installation for Porto Design Biennial, 2025

Science Museum Proposal for a Museum in Rome. Project in Collaboration with GICO Studio and OCHAP

I'm interested in architecture as a shared system beyond fixed typologies to engage the commons through practices of care, collective use, and ecological interdependence.

Books

  • Bright magenta book cover with architectural elements.

    Architecture As Commoning Practice Edited

    Alessandro Orsini and Nick Roseboro ZicZic, 2025

Publications

  • Log-in Labor, Log-in Leisure

    Orsini, Alessandro, and Nick Roseboro. Faktur: Documents and Architecture, no. 4 (2023): 50–64.

  • Transcending the American Dream: House, Family & Domesticity

    Orsini, Alessandro, and Nick Roseboro. “Transcending the American Dream: House, Family & Domesticity.” In One House per Day: No.001-365, edited by Andrew Bruno, with Keith Krumwiede, Malcom Rio, and Clark Thenhaus. ORO Editions, 2022.

  • Key

    Orsini, Alessandro. In Esili e Esodi. Vesper, no. 4. QUODLIBET, 2021.

  • From Urban Voids to Thresholds. A Typological Manifestation of the Collective

    Orsini, Alessandro. In Obiettivo Novecento: Riflessioni e Sperimentazioni Sul Tema Della Città Ideale Nel Secolo Scorso, prima edizione, edited by Mickeal Milocco Borlini and Marco Cosentino. IUVAS, Institute for Urban Variations and Architectural Systems ; Anteferma, 2021.

  • The Collective: From Utopia to Practice

    Orsini, Alessandro. STUDIO, no. 17 (2021): 122–29.

Selected Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

  • Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard

    2024

  • Wallpaper USA 400

    Guide to Creative America’s List

  • Wallpaper USA 300

    Guide to Creative America’s List

  • Culture Magazine Young Architect Inaugural List

    2021

  • Next Progressive, Architect Magazine

    2020

More Architecture Faculty

View all