Francesca is an architect and educator. For the last 10 years, she has taught both undergraduate and graduate-level design and history and theory studies courses at some of the UK's most prestigious institutions, including the Bartlett School of Architecture, the Royal College of Art, the University of Cambridge and the Architectural Association. She was also Director of Studies at Trinity Hall college in Cambridge and co-ordinated the first year History and Theory Programme at the Architectural Association, where she is now a PhD supervisor.

Having obtained her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the IUAV University of Architecture in Venice, Francesca moved to London and graduated with distinction from the Architectural Association with a further Master's degree in History and Critical Thinking. She later obtained her PhD from the Royal College of Art, where she developed research into the ways in which collective rituals have influenced the urban design of London over time.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, she has curated a variety of architectural shows across Europe, and she considers her ongoing research as a form of pedagogy that revolves around acts of surveying the city, suggesting that through the observation everyday interactions between people and the built environment, rituals can be revised as as emphatic practices of exception that perform an instrumental role in shaping new forms of design and systems of planning the contemporary city.

Publications:

Dell’Aglio F. R. (2025) “Liminality as Transgression. The Urban Ritual of XR” in C. Popescu (ed.) Transgression in the Architectures of After-Modernity. A Paradigm at Work in Times of Crises. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 153-169