Fabrizio Furiassi is a doctoral candidate and lecturer at the University of Basel, where he teaches within the MA in Critical Urbanisms and coordinates the AA Visiting School Basel, a joint programme of the Urban Studies division and the AA School of Architecture in London. His doctoral thesis “Mafia, Concrete, Territory: A Material History of Power in Sicily, 1945–1975” questions the role of architects and planners during Italy's postwar building boom, identifying the Mafia’s monopoly on the industry of concrete as a key factor in the rapid urbanization of the region. Rooted in primary research, the project analyses the transformations of the Sicilian territory by tracing the trajectory of concrete constructions to the very landscapes where the aggregates of concrete were sourced. Concrete is examined not as a static product but as continuous with the land and people that shape its transition from liquid to solid. As such, the thesis centralizes the crucial agency of construction materials in historical change, showing how the form and condition of Sicily have been regulated by nontraditional actors otherwise considered external to the discipline’s discourse and practice.

Fabrizio studied law at Roma Tre University before graduating in architecture from the University of Rome La Sapienza (BSc, MArch) and Columbia University GSAPP in New York (MSc AAD). He also studied architecture in Moscow at MARKHI and completed the postgraduate program of the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design. His doctoral research has been supported by grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft, as well as by residencies at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and the Swiss Institute in Palermo. Recent awards include the Columbia GSAPP Incubator Prize and the Independent Projects grant from The Architectural League of New York and the New York State Council on the Arts.

• Architectural and Urban History
• Science and Technology Studies
• Governance, Illegality, and Organized Crime
• Material Politics

• Sicily
• Southern Italy