Francesca Benedetto
Design Critic in Landscape Architecture
- Ecology
- Representation
- Urbanism
Francesca Benedetto is a practitioner and an educator.
Her work centers on the interplay between city and nature, envisioning landscapes from both environmental and social perspectives, examining ecological processes, biodiversity, and climate adaptation while always considering the identity and memory of places.
In 2008, Benedetto founded YellowOffice, a landscape architecture, urbanism, and public art international firm based in Milan. The practice explores new typologies of public spaces capable of addressing the challenges of climate change and responding to the needs of diverse communities. Each project seeks to reintroduce an emotional and spiritual connection to the landscape, aiming to define commons that can truly reconnect people with nature.
YellowOffice engages with multiple scales of design, from territorial strategies, urban planning, public spaces, parks, cemeteries, and gardens to pavilions, interiors, and objects, and is regularly involved in projects within the public realm, mostly related to cultural and civic landscapes.
The practice has worked on numerous projects internationally, earning multiple awards. Among recent recognitions is the winning entry in the International Competition for the New European Library of Information and Culture (Nuova BEIC) (Milan, 2022, currently under construction), where the primary landscape intervention is a new forest plaza (Piazza BEIC).
Francesca Benedetto has published in leading design magazines such as San Rocco magazine, contributed essays to books including The Comedy and I in Reading Dante with Images edited by Matthew Collins and Luca Marcozzi, published by Harvey Miller (2026), and produced visual artwork included in publications such as The Sound of the Woodpecker Bill by Antonio Rovaldi, published by Humboldt Books in 2019.
Her work combines design with community engagement and awareness-raising, also through narrative media such as exhibition design, video and documentaries, mapping, and illustration.
And it has been exhibited, among others, at the inaugural Landscape Garden Exhibition at Agliè Castle (Turin, 2023), Omved Gardens (London, 2022), Palazzo Ducale di Urbino (2021–2022), Biennale di Pisa (2021), Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa (2019), Harvard GSD (2018–19), the first Chicago Architecture Biennial (2015), MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo (Rome, 2014-12), and the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2014).
Francesca Benedetto has taught and participated in panels and conferences at major universities, including Politecnico di Milano, Cass Cities at London Metropolitan University, University of Limerick, NABA, and IED. In 2014, she coordinated the Master’s in Land Design at IED Cagliari, and in 2015 served as Italian ambassador for IED. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Harvard Graduate School of Design faculty in the Department of Landscape Architecture.
Francesca Benedetto studied at Politecnico di Milano and Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. Since 2009, she has been a licensed member of the Order of Architects, Planners, Landscape Architects, and Conservationists of the Province of Milan.
