American Academy In Rome

Enel Italian Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome

The American Academy in Rome is a leading American overseas center for independent studies and advanced research in the fine arts and humanities.

The Academy began as a collaborative effort in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exhibition when a small group, including architects Charles Follen McKim and Daniel Burnham, painters John LaFarge and Francis Millet, and sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French, resolved to create a center to study art amid the classical tradition of ancient Rome. They chose Rome as the site of the Academy because, in their words, "with the architectural and sculptural monuments and mural paintings, its galleries filled with the chef d'oeuvres of every epoch, no other city offers such a field for study or an atmosphere so replete with precedents."

The American Academy in Rome awards the Rome Prize to a select group of artists and scholars, after an application process that begins in the fall of each year. The winners, announced in the spring, are invited to Rome to pursue their work in an atmosphere conducive to intellectual and artistic freedom, interdisciplinary exchange, and innovation.

Enel offers a yearly fellowship within the Italian Fellowship program to an architect, urban designer, or landscape specialist, at any stage in his or her career. The Fellow must be an Italian national working in Italy.

The Enel Foundation Italian Fellow in Architecture/Landscape Architecture prize winners include Annalisa Meta (2016/2017), Ila Bêka (2017/2018), Fosco Lucarelli (2018/2019) and Giovanna Silva (2019/2020).

Annalisa Metta (2016) Architect, with the doctoral thesis project Land Use in the Architecture of Parks and Gardens, is Associate Professor in Landscape Architecture for Università Roma Tre. Among her published books figure La città selvatica. Paesaggi urbani contemporanei (2019); Southward. When Rome Will Have Gone to Tunis (2018); Anna e Lawrence Halprin. Paesaggi e coreografie del quotidiano (2015). In 2007 she founded the studio Osa architettura e paesaggio, in Rome. Among her recent projects: Parco fluviale di Poste Italiane, on the Tiber in Rome (2018, first prize), and Parco del Ponte in Genoa (2019, second prize). She became an Advisor at the American Academy in Rome in 2017.

Ila Bêka (2017) is an artist and film director based in Venice. A graduate of IUAV in Venice and the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville, he’s been working for the past 10 years in close collaboration with Louise Lemoine. Together, they make movies on contemporary architecture and the ways in which it is used and experienced by residents. The works of Bêka and Lemoine were defined as the “Most exciting and critical design project of the year 2016”; they themselves were called “Game Changers 2015” by Metropolis Magazine and selected among the “100 most talented personalities of 2017” by Icon Design. The complete works of Bêka and Lemoine have been purchased by the Museum of Moden Art (MoMA), New York in 2016 for its permanent collection.

Fosco Lucarelli (2018) is an architect, educator, and curator who works in tight collaboration with Mariabruna Fabrizi. They are currently based in Paris where they founded the practice Microcities and the website and visual atlas Socks-studio. They teach design studios, ateliers, and theory courses at the Éav&t, Paris Est. They also taught at the MIARD in Rotterdam and are collaborators at the EPFL in Lausanne. Lucarelli was 2017-18 Garofalo Fellow at the UIC School of Architecture in Chicago; he was also the recipient of a grant from the Graham Foundation. Fabrizi is currently Head of the Architectural Visualisation Department at the Éav&t, Paris Est. Fabrizi and Lucarelli were invited as curators at the 2016 Lisbon Architecture Triennale, and organized the exhibition “Inner Space” at the Lisbon Triennale 2019. They published the book Inner Space in 2019 with Poligrafa publishing. Their works have been awarded and exhibited widely.

Giovanna Silva (2020) lives and works in Milan. She has collaborated with Domus and Abitare magazines, publishing also with many Italian and foreign publishing houses. She founded the architecture magazine San Rocco and Humboldt Books, of which she is Editorial Director. She took part in the 14th International Exhibition of Architecture in Venice  (14. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura di Venezia), and in the Gio Ponti Exhibition at Maxxi in Rome. She teaches editorial photography at Milan’s NABA, at Venice’s IUAV and Urbino’s ISIA.