Alberto Faliva was born in Cremona in 1972. He is an architect, interior designer, project manager, 3D visualizer, researcher, and cat lover. He has collaborated with prominent architects including P.L. Faloci in Paris, Guido Canali in Parma, and spent six years with Gregotti Associati International in Milan. He graduated from IUAV Venice, under the supervision of Prof. Howard Burns (Harvard University, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) and Monique Chatenet (Chef du Patrimoine, France), and obtained his PhD at the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance in Tours, France. He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leicester, UK. As an architect with Gregotti Associati, he contributed to the urban planning of Pujiang New Town in Shanghai, China. He has worked as a project manager with D&SIGN srl on various international high-end jewelry stores, including MiaMoon (Bahrain), Midas (Sydney), AME (Los Angeles and New York), Windeshausen (Luxembourg), Gemma (Vienna), and the Diamond Group headquarters (Germany and Hong Kong). He served as senior architect for the new BBraun offices in Melsungen, Germany, in collaboration with Wilford Schupp Architects (James Stirling’s studio) and Prisma, Milan. With Prisma, he also designed corporate interiors for clients in Milan such as Azimut, Prelios, Lidl, Accenture, Fujitsu, and Fastweb. He is the author of the design for a luxury hotel in Parma and several retail environments, including 3D visualizations for Giorgio Armani. Faliva has curated and coordinated a series of high-profile conferences and exhibitions. These include events on scenography and contemporary architecture with guests such as Oscar-winning production designer Dante Ferretti, architectural historian Joseph Rykwert, art historian Mina Gregori, and architect Vittorio Gregotti. He also curated a traveling exhibition on the Renaissance villa, presented at NYU in New York, at the Musée National de la Renaissance in Paris (in collaboration with Prof. Alain E. Brandenburg and Prof. R.J. Knecht), at Casa del Mantegna in Mantua, and at Palazzo Roncadelli Manna in Cremona with Prof. Richard Ingersoll (Syracuse University). The final exhibition stage was held in London at Westminster University, during the 2015 London Festival of Architecture, with wooden models crafted by Ivan Simonato of the Centro Studi Andrea Palladio, Vicenza (catalogue by Electa).Together with M. Tonon, he developed the first cross-platform software (6 degrees of freedom) allowing real-time interaction—without glasses or headsets—between the user and a photorealistic 3D render using only a webcam. As the user moves their head, the perspective of the image dynamically adjusts, revealing spatial depth.
My research sheds new light on the architecture of the Cremonese masters Francesco and Giuseppe Dattaro, offering the first comprehensive study dedicated to their work. It also explores the possible attribution of the Château de Boulogne (Paris, 1527) to members of the same circle of Cremonese artists—both documented and undocumented in France—such as Antonio Melone and Evangelista Sacca. In doing so, the study aims to finally address a question famously posed by Viollet-le-Duc: “trouver un seul palais italien qui ait avec Boulogne une apparence de parenté…” (“to find a single Italian palace that bears any resemblance to Boulogne”). This investigation may lead us to identify the authors of what could be considered the first Renaissance château in France—marking the true arrival of Renaissance architecture on French soil.
Books and Articles.
