The Empire

The Empire is an architecture and planning office founded in 2013 by Ludovico Centis. The office’s wide-ranging activity involves both design and teaching, and both research and writing. The Empire designs interiors and ephemeral installations, buildings and public spaces, large-scale projects and territorial visions. The Empire’s research focuses on the ways in which individuals and institutions, as well as desires and power, shape cities and landscapes. Ludovico Centis is an architect, and co-founder and editor of the architecture magazine San Rocco. He has been a partner at the architectural office Salottobuono from 2007 to 2012. Centis has a PhD in Urbanism (Università IUAV di Venezia). He has lectured and taught in Italian and international universities, such as Università IUAV di Venezia (Venice), the Politecnico in Milan, the Architectural Association School of Architecture (London), Cornell University (Ithaca,NY), Princeton University (Princeton, NJ). Centis has been the 2013–14 Peter Reyner Banham Fellow at the University at Buffalo–SUNY. During the spring of 2015 he has been at the Center for Land Use Interpretation as a participant in the Wendover Residence Program. Centis has been awarded a 2018 Getty Library Research Grant at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. He is currently a Research Fellow in Urbanism at Università IUAV di Venezia.