Elena Rocchi

Elena Rocchi, PhD, is an Italian architect, educator, and researcher whose work investigates how architecture can create environments for human life, learning, and agency under conditions of change and uncertainty.

She is Clinical Professor at Arizona State University’s The Design School and Co-Director of the Master of Science in Design in Space Architecture & Extreme Environments. She is also Faculty Affiliate with ASU’s Biomimicry Center. Her current research brings architecture into dialogue with space exploration, human performance, emerging technologies, and extreme environments, asking how design can support people as they live, work, learn, and make decisions in conditions radically different from those for which architecture has traditionally been conceived.

Her recent work focuses particularly on space architecture and lunar environments; immersive and spatial systems for human health and situational awareness; robotic and autonomous construction; and the design of interdisciplinary learning environments. Across these areas, she approaches architecture not simply as the design of objects, but as the design of relationships among people, environments, technologies, information, and action.

At ASU, Rocchi has helped develop new educational models connecting architecture with aerospace, engineering, science, film, industry, and the humanities. Her teaching ranges from large-scale first-year design education to advanced studios, honors research, history and theory, travel-based learning, and graduate work in Space Architecture & Extreme Environments. Her recent courses include Prototyping Futures, the Barrett College Fellows research lab, The Image of Rome, and graduate architecture studios. Her research and teaching increasingly use real-world challenges, interdisciplinary teams, prototypes, simulations, immersive environments, and partnerships as learning environments through which students develop confidence and agency.

Recent projects include Becoming Interplanetary, premiered at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney; Design for the Moon, presented at Milan Design Week and in Venice; and research on immersive experience design for orbital healthcare. She has participated in international conversations on lunar construction, permanent habitation in orbital and lunar environments, space sustainability, and interdisciplinary workforce development for the aerospace sector. 

Before joining ASU in 2013, Rocchi practiced internationally with Miralles Tagliabue EMBT in Barcelona, where she served as Senior Architect, Project Leader, and Office Design Director between 1995 and 2008. Her work included architecture, landscape, interiors, exhibitions, publications, and major international projects including Santa Caterina Market, Diagonal Mar Park, the Gas Natural headquarters, IUAV Venice, Vigo University Campus, and housing in Borneo Island, Amsterdam. This formative period established an approach that continues throughout her work: architecture is learned through drawing, making, building, writing, exhibiting, traveling, and working with others.

Her work has been presented internationally through lectures, workshops, exhibitions, juries, and collaborations in Europe, Africa, North and South America, and Australia, including ETH Zürich, Cornell University, IUAV Venice, Politecnico di Milano, UNAM, IAAC, the International Astronautical Congress, and the Venice Architecture Biennale. 

Rocchi received the AIA Arizona Educator of the Year Award in 2020 and two ASU Professor of Impact Awards in 2026. Her recent funded research includes the HIRBI project Immersive Experience Design for Orbital Healthcare, Interplanetary Initiative Seed Funding, a Principled Innovation Faculty Grant, and a Prototyping Ethics Seed Grant.

She holds a PhD in Design, Environment and the Arts from Arizona State University, a Master's in Theory and History of Architecture from ETSAB–Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, and a Master's degree in Architecture, summa cum laude, from Sapienza University of Rome.

Research: 
Rocchi's research investigates architecture as an environment for human agency under conditions of uncertainty. Her work moves across three interconnected territories: Space Architecture & Extreme Environments, including lunar habitation, construction, human performance, and situational awareness; Design and Emerging Technologies, including immersive environments, simulation, digital twins, robotics, and AI-mediated spatial systems; and Architectural Learning, examining how designed learning environments enable observation, experimentation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the transfer of knowledge across contexts. Her research is grounded in a longer investigation of architecture through drawing, history, representation, narrative, travel, making, and lived experience. Rather than treating these as separate fields, she uses them as different ways of asking the same question: how can architecture create the conditions through which people understand an unfamiliar world and learn how to act within it?

Education

• Ph.D. in Design, Environments, and the Arts, ASU, Tempe, United States
• Master of Theory and History of Architecture, ETSAB, Barcelona, Spain
• Bachelor of Architecture, Università degli Studi Di Roma "La Sapienza", Roma, Italia