Valeria Federighi is a practicing architect and temporary research fellow at the Politecnico di Torino. She holds a PhD (2017) and MArch (2011) from the same school, and a Master of Science in Design Research (2012) from the University of Michigan.
This has generated an informal architecture constituted of small-scale disciplinary means, or polite practices, as well as a series of converging discourses, questioning or trying to change the socio-political and professional landscape. These were produced most often in curated events and publications which concentrated varied directions, projects and processes, in an attempt to offer common identities and representations. Valeria Federighi's book proposes a very useful and necessary epistemological examination of such representations. The book is triggered by the scientific difficulty in approaching the relationship between architecture and informality, all the more disarming in an era of global flows and interwoven determinations. --Tudor Elian, Teaching Assistant, PhD, Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest--Tudor Elian