Alessandro Melis is Full Professor and first Endowed Chair at the New York Institute of Technology. He was the curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Biennale, and he has been an Ambassador for Italian Design in Paris, New York, Washington, D.C. and Tenerife. He is the author of over 250 publications and has delivered lectures at Cambridge, MoMA, and the China Academy of Art. He is the co-founder of Heliopolis 21, which is documented in Heliopolis 21 (Skira, 2022) and Utopic Real World (D Editore, 2021). His work includes the regeneration of the community gardens of East Harlem, the Metamorphosis of the Italian Embassy in London, the Stella Maris Hospital, Fiera del Trentino, Casa Hernández (Mérida), and College Rifles (Auckland). The Ministry of Culture recognized the SM1938 Memory Center and the Peccioli Library as one of the most significant Italian projects since 1945. H21 exhibited at the Buenos Aires Biennale in 2019 and the Santo Domingo Biennale in 2024.