Urban Flight, digital collage, 15 x 15 cm, 2025
Lorenzo Nassimbeni is a conceptual architect, visual artist, and educator whose practice is rooted in the analysis of urban and natural landscape. Conceptual thought, articulated through the discipline of drawing,serves as the generator for built architectures and artworks. The studio’s work seeks to define a mode of architectural practice that unites artistic sensibility with a responsive approach to urban and social contexts. The outcome of this process is the creation of socially impactful interventions that imaginatively transform existing environments and reveal the poetic potential of the public realm.
Significant public artworks include a staircase artwork at Alice Lane, Johannesburg (2016), a mural at the Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital, Johannesburg (in collaboration with 26’10 South Architects) (2016), a surface artwork at Freedom Square, Bonteheuwel, (in collaboration with TERRA+ Landscape Architects) (2023) and a surface artwork at Ellipse Waterfall, Johannesburg (in collaboration with dhk Architects and GREENinc Landscape Architecture+Urbanism) (2023).
Noteworthy group exhibitions featuring his work include : State Of The Arts, 54th International Venice Biennale, Italian Pavilion (2011) ; Materials revisited, 10th Triennial for Form and Content, Museum for Applied Arts, Frankfurt (2011) ; L'architettura del mondo, Trienalle di Milano (2012) ; 14th Venice Architecture Biennale, Fittja pavilion, Botkyra Konsthall (2014), and the FNB Johannesburg Art Fair, Johannesburg, South Africa (2014 and 2016). Nassimbeni has recently been awarded the Social Impact Art Prize, a competition curated by the Rupert Museum, for an architectural installation. At present, Nassimbeni is working on a variety of community-based public art projects commissioned by the City of Cape Town.
Nassimbeni has given numerous public talks, and has taught extensively in the Department of Architecture at both WITS and UJ, Johannesburg. He currently runs the Third Year Design programme at SEA (School of Explorative Architecture).