Virginia San Fratello
NCAARB, B.Envd; North Carolina State University, M.Arch; Columbia University
Virginia San Fratello is an educator, designer and creative technologist. She is the Chair of the Department of Design at San Jose State University in Silicon Valley and an International Interior Design Association (IIDA) Educator of the Year recipient. She is a design activist, author, and thought leader within the fields of additive manufacturing, architecture, interior and product design. She has served in the role of Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Arkansas, Pratt University, and The University of Queensland. In 2014 her creative practice, Rael San Fratello, was named an Emerging Voice by The Architectural League of New York—one of the most coveted awards in North American architecture. In 2016 Rael San Fratello was also awarded the Digital Practice Award of Excellence by the The Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA). In 2020 Rael San Fratello received an Art + Technology Award from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). In 2020 the Pink Borderwall Teeter Totters installed on the border between the USA and Mexico, designed by Rael and San Fratello, was awarded the Beasley Design of the Year Award.
San Fratello is the co-author of Printing Architecture: Innovative Recipes for 3D Printing (Princeton Architectural Press 2018), a book that reexamines the building process from the bottom up and offers illuminating case studies for 3D printing with materials like chardonnay grape skins, salt and sawdust. Emerging Objects, a company she co-founded as leads as Chief Creative Officer, is an independent, creatively driven, 3D Printing MAKE-tank specializing in innovations in 3D printing architecture, building components, environments and products (a short documentary of their work can be seen here). She was also the co-founder and President of the start-up wood technology company, FORUST.
Her work can be seen in several documentary films produced by The Museum of Modern Art for her work on the U.S.-Mexico border and for additive manufacturing, by KQED in an emmy winning documentary film about the work of her creative practice, by The New Yorker, and the Smithsonian.
San Fratello earned her Master of Architecture degree at Columbia University in the City of New York and her Bachelor of Environmental Design from North Carolina State University. Previous academic appointments include positions at the Southern California Institute for Architecture (SCI_arc), Clemson University, the University of Arizona, and The University of California Berkeley. Her work has been published widely, including in the New York Times, Wired, MARK, Domus, Interior Design Magazine, the MIT Technology Review, Metropolis Magazine, PRAXIS, Thresholds, Log, Public Art Review, and is recognized by several institutions, including La Biennale di Venezia, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, LACMA, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Center for Fine Arts, Netherlands, For Freedoms, the YBCA 100, and included in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, The London Design Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, LACMA, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya.
Her work is represented by the Cristina Grajales Gallery in New York City.