Dr Manolo Guerci

Qualifications: Dip. Arch., M.Arch. (Laurea cum laude – Roma III), M.Phil. (Cantab.), Ph.D. (Cantab.), PGCHE (Kent), FHEA, FSA

Manolo Guerci’s education, professional and academic experience, and overall expertise covers architecture, art and architectural history, as well as heritage and conservation, developed primarily, though not exclusively, between Italy, France and Britain over thirty years.

Between 2005 and 2010 he taught in the Departments of Art History and Architecture at Cambridge, while in 2010 he joined the Kent School of Architecture and Planning (KSAP). He has held fellowships around the world, while in 2022 he was Visiting Professor at the University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’. He acts as heritage consultant for a London architecture firm.

Dr Guerci’s research interests range from the Early-Modern Period – his primary field of research – to Modernism, Japan, and Post War, from conservation principles and theories, to construction processes and building techniques, to meanings and symbolism in architecture. His works centres around how one brings the concept of precedent to the practice of design, and to an understanding of space cultures and cultural sustainability more broadly. Against this background, Dr Guerci has developed a wide research-led teaching portfolio between design, urban analysis, conservation, and cultural context, taught at all levels in different schools around the world. In 2016, he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in London in recognition of his achievements in these fields.

Dr Guerci sits on the Strategy Group and is closely involved with the running of the School. After managing the internationalisation and postgraduate programmes, he now leads the architecture BA programme, alongside the Erasmus/Touring coordination and library liaison. He is a longstanding member of the Curriculum Development Group and has worked with two previous REF steering committees.  

Architecture, cities and space cultures in Early-Modern Europe and beyond

• Sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Italy and France, with particular attention to Rome and Paris
• Sixteenth- to nineteenth-century Britain, with particular attention to London, the Strand palaces and the establishment of a(n) (inter)national style for global Britain
• Architecture and water and global riverine environments

Modernism and Post-War

• The legacy of Post-War architecture
• Private and social housing
• Influence on and relations between Modernism and traditional Japanese architecture

Heritage, conservation, and cultural sustainability(ies)

• Conservation principles and theories, historicism, memory and the concept of emulation, with a global perspective
• Live restoration projects/heritage consultancy work
• Urban regeneration
• Intellectual and heritage-based approaches to the climate emergency: how do we educate new generations of designers

Drawings and construction techniques

• Sixteenth- to nineteenth-century collections in Britain, France, Italy and the USA
• Drawing, construction process and building techniques in Early-Modern Europe
• The role of drawings in the definition of authorship in design practice

Symbolism and meanings in architecture

• The meanings of architecture, the concept of precedent with a global perspective
• The establishment of national identities and the role of historiography: operational history/ies

Current projects include:

A new on-line, free-access critical edition cum catalogue of ‘The Book of Architecture of John Thorpe (c.1565-1655)’, preserved at the Sir John Soane’s Museum, London

https://www.soane.org/features/new-critical-edition-cum-catalogue-book-architecture-john-thorpe 

Funded by the British Academy, the Kent Competitive Research Reboot Scheme, and the Leon Levy Foundation, the project is part of an on-going digitisation of the Museum’s archives, and runs parallel to the re-cataloguing of the contemporaneous drawings by Robert and John Smythson, preserved at the RIBA, by Olivia Horsfall-Turner (Senior Curator Architecture and Design, V&A/RIBA partnership), with whom I collaborate on a series of knowledge transfer/public engagement events.

Exhibition on ‘Drawing buildings: observation, invention and the architect in Early Modern England’, Sir John Soane’s Museum, co-curated with Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner

A new monograph on Excellent Geometrician and Surveior … not onely learned and ingenuous …’: John Thorpe and the making of an architect in Early Modern England (working title) to be submitted to Walpole Society Publication Committee

At the same time, Dr Guerci’s research ties with Europe, Italy in particular, remain strong. He recently concluded a Visiting Professorship at the University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, which resulted in a new research agreement with Prof. Maria Grazia D’Amelio on ‘Roma antica e moderna nelle collezioni grafiche inglesi (15th-20th c): alla ricerca di un modello di Stato’. 

ARCH8440 Conservation Principles (MSc), Module Convenor
ARCH5440 Renaissance to Neoclassicism (Stage 2), Module Convenor
ARCH6100 Contemporary Architectural Investigation (Stages 3,5), Supervisor
ARCH5970 Architectural Design (Stages 3), Design Tutor 

Dr Guerci is interested in any subject broadly related to his research expertise. Dissertations he supervises/ed, including as part of the co-tutelle he established with Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, range from the Henrician castles in the South East, to the country house industry or Post War English church crchitecture; from the development of St Radegund’s Abbey at Dover, to strategies for the regeneration on inland areas in central Italy or small coastal towns in the Mediterranean.

• Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, London
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Member of SAHGB, The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain
• Member of the ‘Centro Studi sulla Cultura e Immagine di Roma’
• Member of AISTARCH, ‘Associazione Italiana Storici dell’Architettura’
• Member of AISTARCH’s International Committee
• Member of AISTARCH Journal’s (Studi e Ricerche di Storia dell’Architettura) Editorial Board
• Member of RATS, Renaissance Architecture Theory Scholars, UK
• Member of The Renaissance Society of America
• Member of AHRA, Architectural Humanities Research Association
• Member of the Scientific Committee of ‘Italy outside Italy’, Politecnico di Milano, Fondazione USA Politecnico di Milano
• Member of CREAte, the Centre for Research in European Architecture, Kent School of Architecture and Planning
• Member of the Centre of Heritage, University of Kent
• Part of the University of Kent Signature Theme on ‘Time Heritage Technologies and Futures’
• Member of the History & Heritage IAA Network, University of Kent
• Member of MEMS, Medieval and Earl-Modern Studies Scholars, University of Kent
• Contribution to the Attingham Trust course on London
• Peer-reviewer of grants and publications
• Specialist adviser for academic appointments