Lucio Frigo
Supervisor
Abstract
Designing the Cultural Ecology of the City
A Framework for Design Practice in Urban Regeneration
Contemporary urban regeneration is often fragmented across disciplines, institutions and forms of expertise. Urban design, heritage conservation, architecture, economic development, infrastructure and social programmes tend to operate through separate frameworks, despite acting upon the same urban environments. This research proposescultural ecology as a way of understanding the city as a dynamic system of relationships between people, institutions, economies, knowledge, the built environment and the natural world. It asks whether design can provide a means of identifying, representing and transforming the relationships between these elements, and whether this can lead to more interconnected and adaptive approaches to urban regeneration.
Developed through practice and a series of case studies in historic cities across the Middle East and North Africa, the research examines regeneration as an evolving process rather than a predetermined masterplan. It explores methods of urban analysis, relational mapping and design intervention that begin with the existing cultural and material conditions of a place, including its inhabitants, institutions, economies, buildings, landscapes and forms of knowledge.
The research ultimately seeks to develop a transferable framework for regeneration that connects analysis to action: identifying critical relationships within a cultural ecology and translating them into principles, plans, projects, programmes and institutional strategies. In doing so, it considers design as a practice capable of mediating between the multiple forces through which cities are continuously made and remade.
Bio
Lucio Frigo is an urban developer working at the intersection of design, cities and culture. Through Materia, the development company he founded, his work focuses on the regeneration of historic city centres and neighbourhoods, and on the development of cultural institutions, museums, schools and affordable housing projects across the Middle East and Africa. Lucio participated in the 2025 Venice Architectural Biennale and he is co-editor, with Prof. Gareth Doherty, of the forthcoming Atlas for the Medina of Tunis (Lars Müller Publishers, 2027). His projects include collaborations with Pritzker Prize laureates and Serpentine Pavilion designers, and have been featured in international publications and exhibited in leading museums. He spearheaded the establishment of a research fund with the Harvard Graduate School of Design dedicated to study of the Medina of Tunis as an urban landscape. He also serves on advisory boards for large-scale urban development initiatives, including Expo 2030 Riyadh, Jeddah Historic District, and Central Riyadh Development Company. He also regularly serves as jury member for international architecture competitions. Lucio is a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art in London. He holds a MA in Cultural Studies and a MA in Music Composition from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BA in Economics and Finance from the Bocconi University in Milan.
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Contact
Prof Dr Ines Weizman
Professor of History and Theory of Architecture
Head of PhD Programme
School of Architecture
Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore, London
SW7 2EU
ines.weizman@rca.ac.uk
School of Architecture, Royal College of Art
Postgraduate Research (PGR) Programme