Dr. Federica Goffi

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Dr. Federica Goffi is a Professor of Architecture at the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, where she has taught since 2007. She holds a PhD in Architecture and Design Research from Virginia Tech and a Dottore in Architettura from the University of Genoa, Italy.

Goffi served as co-chair of the PhD and MAS programs in architecture from 2017 to 2025 and as Interim Director of the ASAU from July 2021 to December 2022. From 2013 to 2017, she was Associate Director of Graduate Studies. From 2011 to 2013, she served as Associate Director of Professional Graduate Studies. Goffi has also worked as an Assistant Professor at RISD in the United States (2005-2007).

Goffi’s research concerns the renewal of buildings, whether they be heritage or not, questioning the relationship between architecture and time. Starting from the idea that a building is a sustainable work-in-progress and not the result of a single event of design, her work investigates built conservation as a form of invention and imagination. She authored Architecture in Conversion and the Work of Carlo Scarpa (Lund Humphries, 2025). Her book, Time Matter[s]: Invention and Re-imagination in Built Conservation: The Unfinished Drawing and Building of St. Peter’s in the Vatican was published by Ashgate in 2013.

She is the lead curator, author of the call, and the editor of the [from] Adaptive Reuse [to] Adaptive Architecture conference. The international symposium, which will be held at Carleton University in May 2026, is co-convened by Dr. Federica Goffi, Dr. Mariana Esponda, and Dr. Mario Santana.

She is the editor of The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models: From Translating to Archiving, Collecting and Displaying (May 2022). Goffi pre-launched the book at the international lecture series Mantovarchitettura, organized by the UNESCO Chair in Architectural Preservation and Planning in World Heritage Cities.

She is guest editor of a special issue of the Routledge journal Architecture and Culture, titled And Yet It Moves: Ethics, Power and Politics in the Stories of Collecting, Archiving and Displaying of Architectural Drawings and Models (September 2021).

She is the Chair of the Carleton Research | Practice of Teaching | Collaborative (C R | P T | C, founded in 2019). The collaborative pursues research in the humanities with a diverse research agenda. The third Agora International Symposium is titled: Mediating Matter(s): Architecture and Bodily Affects (October 2025).

Dr. Goffi co-edited with Dr. Isabel Potworowski and Dr. Kristin Washco (Un)common Precedents in Architectural Design (Routledge 2025), a book based on the Agora II International Symposium held September 22-24, 2023, at Carleton University.

In 2024, she published the co-edited book Architectures of Hiding: Crafting Concealment | Omission | Deception | Erasure | Silence together with Rana Abughannam, Émélie Desrochers-Turgeon, Pallavi Swaranjali. The book was developed from Agora I, an International Symposium held at ASAU in September 2021 by the book editors.

She edited a book titled InterVIEWS: Insight and Introspection in Doctoral Research in Architecture (Routledge 2020).

Goffi edited Marco Frascari’s Dream House: A Theory of Imagination (Routledge 2017) and co-edited Ceilings and Dreams: The Architecture of Levity (2020). She has also published book chapters (Routledge, Intellect Press, Leuven Press) and journal articles on the threefold nature of time-weather-tempo (OBL/QUE, AD, INTAR, ARQ, Interstices, InForm, Scroope).

Goffi is interested in the relationship between psychosomatic health and architecture and has published articles originating from the observation of infraordinary events in the everyday life of healthcare facilities, to challenge the implementation of ordinary details, and respond to overlooked design issues fostering psychosomatic health in the built environment. She believes that it will be increasingly important for architects to design adaptable architectural details whose impact can be felt at the scale of cities.

Her recent publications include:

“FACTUM 1:1,” in T-Squared. Theories & Tactics in Architecture and Design, edited by Samantha Krukowski, with an introduction by David Leatherbarrow. Intellect Press (January 2022).

“Chromesthesia and the Multiverse of Listening in Music and Architecture: Luigi Nono in Collaboration with Renzo Piano,” in The Sound of Architecture: Acoustic Atmospheres in Place. Edited by Angeliki Sioli and Elisavet Kiourtsoglou. Elsevier (May 2022).

“Sited-Memory: A Peripatetic Storytelling at the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona.” JOELHO 13: Memory, Memorabilia and the Making. Edited by Armando Rabaça, Bruno Gil (March 2022).