Building Beauty - APS

Building Beauty - APS is an Italian NGO that promotes research and education in architecture and urbanism, and provides an international framework for communication between members. Legally established as nonprofit organization according to the Italian law in 2017, Building Beauty - APS is homed in Palermo, Italy. It’s President and Legal Representative is Marina Marino.

Members are drawn from several disciplines, including architecture, geography, history, sociology and town planning.

Building Beauty - APS designs, validates and teaches a Post-Graduate Program for Architects, Builders, and Placemakers. Launched in 2017 at the Sant’Anna Institute of Sorrento, Italy, the program is taught in English language and offers a radically interdisciplinary, emotional and practical experience of making things across scales, innovative both in terms of contents and teaching model.

Marina Marino, President

Marina is an expert in urban and regional planning and administrative improvement processes for local governments and entities in response to legality and security issues. She has been responsible for the urban planning of general master plans and coordinates the development of urban planning tools pursuant to Regional Law 19/2020, as amended.

She has extensive experience in technical/administrative and professional support for Extraordinary Commissions established in municipalities following dissolution due to mafia infiltration. She has acquired specific technical and disciplinary expertise in the pervasive processes resulting from the presence of organized crime in the region, demonstrating an aptitude for managing managerial roles in conflict-ridden contexts.

She has overseen the management and training of administrative staff on a technical and professional level, promoting training activities for public administrations on transparency, simplification, and anti-corruption in urban planning and private construction management. She has handled managerial responsibilities using innovative methods, through reviewing the process and procedures conducted, and monitoring the results achieved, including through institutional discussions with the local community. She served on the Board of Directors as Vice President of the Sicilian Highway Consortium (CAS) by appointment of the President of the Sicilian Region (2013-2018).

She has published articles and essays on the relationship between the Mafia and urban planning, as well as on housing conditions in southern Italy.

Maggie Moore Alexander, Vice President and Co-Founder

Maggie Moore Alexander collaborated with Christopher Alexander on many projects, including The Nature of Order and The Battle for The Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World Systems. She is the President of The Center for Environmental Structure (CES), which was established by Alexander in 1967 as a non-profit educational institution in California, USA.  It has offered architects, engineers, and builders the opportunity to delve into profound research in the nature and qualities of Architecture, and concurrently see the results manifested in actual buildings and projects designed and built worldwide. Building Beauty furthers Alexander’s teaching agenda.

She has a Masters Degree in Organization Change and Development. She lives in England.

Sergio Porta, Past President, Co-Founder and Member of the Executive Committee

Sergio Porta, architect and PhD in Urban Planning, is Professor of Urban Design and Director of UDSU (Urban Design Studies Unit) in the Department of Architecture of the Univ. of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK. His research is on Sustainable Urban Design, including master planning for adaptive urbanism, urban morphology and evolution, network analysis of urban spatial systems, community based construction process and beauty generation, construction and therapy.

He has published over forty papers on international peer-reviewed journals and two monographs. He sits on the editorial boards of several leading journals of urban science and design and has been invited speaker at various international seminars conferences including UN-Habitat in Geneva and Barcelona, University of Cambridge, UCL London and Venice Biennale.

Sergio resides in England.

Jeraldene Lovell-Cole, Member of the Executive Committee

Jeraldene Lovell-Cole has been a professional facilitator, counsellor, coach and teacher for the past forty years, working with the concepts of wholeness, cosmology and beauty. She studied at Holistic Life University in California where she became a certified counsellor and educator.

Jeraldene has also been an artist since childhood. She worked with Christopher Alexander on the images for The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World Systems, and enjoyed painting with him as a more casual pursuit.

 She resides in England.  

Duo Dickinson, Member of the Executive Committee

Duo Dickinson, is an architect, builder, writer and educator. Having graduated from Cornell University1977, He has built over 700 things. 30 percent of his work is pro bono or at-cost work. He has received more than 30 awards, been widely published, given more than 100 talks, and is co-founder of The Congress of Residential Architecture (CORA) in the US. He has taught at Yale University, Roger Williams University, and is currently teaching at the University of Hartford. Duo has written seven books, including The Small House, The House You Build, and A Home Called New England has just been published, and is active in radio and media. He was elected a Fellow in AIA in 2017.

Duo resides in Connecticut in the United States.