Environments by Design

Natalia Fumagalli. Ph.D, Assistant professor at the University of Milan, Department of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences, is Professor of “Survey, map drawing and materials for green areas” in the Bachelor of “Crops Production and green space management” and professor of “Green infrastructures Planning and Design” in the Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) at the University of Milan. She is member of the Italian Association of Agricultural Engineering, the Italian Association of Landscape Architects and European Society of Landscape Ecology. She is PI of “Green space for active living: older adults perspectives”, two years research project founded by Fondazione Cariplo on green and aging. She is author of more than 50 papers on rural planning, greenways planning and design and healing garden design.

Rita Berto, Ph.D., she is a psychologist specialized in environmental psychology. She was Visiting Research Associate in Psychology (Honorary) at the Washington University in St. Louis (MO –USA), and professor of Environmental Psychology and Cognitive Psychology at the University of Padova (Italy). Her biography was included in Who’s Who in the World 2007. She is author of a book on environmental stress and one on biophilia and of numerous research articles; she is appointed reviewer for the most important journals of environmental psychology. At the moment she develops her research activity at the Laboratory of Affective Ecology –LEAF- of the University of Valle d’Aosta (Italy), and is research advisor of a granted project on “green and aging”. She holds classes/seminars on different environmental psychology issues at the University of Padova and Milano (Italy) and is consultant of restorative environment and biophilic design. 

Elisabetta Fermani: chartered and independent consultant agronomist, working in the field of design and consultancy for the landscape and the environment, regenerative agriculture, ecological connections and “healing gardens” for care facilities. Currently she is a research fellow at the University of Milan, Department of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences Department in a project aimed at evaluating the benefits that contact with nature has on the elderly. She alongside her work as a designer, collaborations with university faculties and private training institutes, in educational seminars, as an expert on the subject, in specialization courses and seminars on Healing gardens and teaching support in university landscape design courses.

Giuseppe Barbiero is head of the Laboratory of Affective Ecology at the University of Valle D’Aosta (LEAF/UniVDA). He is co-editor of Visions for Sustainability, an international scientific journal that promote debates on ways in which sustainability can be addressed and applied in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives. His main research interests are the biophilia hypothesis and the Gaia hypothesis. He is also interested in their applications such as Biophilic Design in architecture or Green Mindfulness in ecopsychology.

Giulio Senes, Ph.D., Assistant professor at the University of Milan, Department of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences, is Professor of “Green infrastructures Planning and Design” in the Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) at the University of Milan, where he also teaches “Rural Land-use Planning and Landscape Design” and is Director of the Post-Graduate Course in Healing gardens design. He is President of the European Greenways Association and member of the Italian Association of Agricultural Engineering, the National Institute of Urban Planning and the Italian Association of Landscape Architects, visiting Professor at the Universidad de la Republica di Montevideo (Uruguay), for the “Licenciatura in Diseño De Paisaje”. He is author of more than 80 papers on land-use and landscape planning, greenways planning and design, and healing gardens design; he has been a speaker in more than 90 conferences in Italy and abroad.