Ettore Santi

World Agrarian Histories; Urban Design; Land and Space; China Rural-Urban Studies.

M.Arch., Tongji University of Shanghai
M.Arch., Polytechnic University of Milan
B.S. Architecture, Polytechnic University of Milan

Ettore’s work examines environmental design as a tool for driving social change since the 20th Century. With a focus on agrarian transformations in modern China, his dissertation “Designing a Land Revolution: The Corporate Reinvention of China’s Rural Environment” maps the ongoing construction of new high-tech farms, soil science laboratories, rural ecotourism parks, and modern rural homes across China’s Hunan Province. This design enterprise, the study argues, serves for governing the transition from a collective and household farming model to a large-
scale corporate production system, while turning villages into machinic environments for food and resource extraction.

Before joining UC Berkeley, Ettore has worked as an architectural designer, consultant, curator, and educator in China, Italy, and the United States. His Master’s thesis “Apparatus China. The Mechanism of Contemporary Chinese Architecture,” an ethnographic study of architectural design practices in Shanghai, received the Academic Excellence Award at Tongji University.

LEAD INSTRUCTOR (courses designed and taught)

Designing the Valley: a Rural California Studio, advanced design studio, Master of Urban Design, UC Berkeley

The Village Market, undergraduate design studio, Architecture, Hunan University

The Environmental Humanities, graduate seminar, Architecture, Hunan University

CO-INSTRUCTOR

The Richmond Parkway, fundamentals design studio, Master of Urban Design, UC Berkeley

Rethinking the Shopping Mall, advanced design studio, Master of Urban Design, UC Berkeley

GRADUATE STUDENT INSTRUCTOR

Introduction to Design Theory and Criticism, undergraduate survey, UC Berkeley

A Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism (from Prehistory to the Renaissance), undergraduate survey, UC Berkeley

A Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism (from Baroque to the Present), undergraduate survey, UC Berkeley

EXTERNAL GRANTS:

ACLS / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation – Dissertation Completion Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies

SSRC / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation – International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Science Research Council

Graham Foundation – Carter Manny Award Citation of Special Recognition

ACLS / Henry Luce Foundation – Pre-Dissertation Summer Research Grant in China Studies, American Council of Learned Societies

China’s National Science Foundation Research Fund 2018 (Principal Investigator: Xuan Chen)

CAMPUS GRANTS:

John L. Simpson Memorial Research

Fellowship in International and Comparative Studies, UC Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies

Pamela and Kenneth Fong Graduate Student Fellowships, UC Berkeley’s Center for Chinese Studies

Berkeley Connect Fellowship, UC Berkeley
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, UC Berkeley

Spiro Kostof Grant in Architectural History, UC Berkeley’s Architecture Department

Global Metropolitan Studies Summer Research Grant, UC Berkeley Remote Instruction Grant, UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design

PREVIOUS AWARDS:

Master’s Thesis Academic Excellence Award, Tongji University

International Mobility Fund, Polytechnic University of Milan and Italian Ministry of University and Research

Summa Cum Laude at Master’s Degree, Polytechnic University of Milan

Summa Cum Laude at Bachelor Degree, Polytechnic University of Milan

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES:

2022 Piazzoni, Francesca, Jocelyn Poe and Ettore Santi. “What Design for Urban Design Justice?” Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking (June 1st, 2022) https://doi.org/10.1080/17549175.2022.2074522

2017 Santi, Ettore. “Uncertainty and Design Practice in China. The ‘Apparatus’ of Shanghai Experimental Architecture.” Journal of Architecture and Urbanism Vol. 41, no. 2 (April 3, 2017): 120–28. https://doi.org/10.3846/20297955.2017.1317298

2016 Santi, Ettore. “Il ‘dispositivo’ dell’architettura sperimentale cinese. Identità e soft power nell’era del sogno cinese.” [The dispositif of China’s Experimental Architecture. Identity and Soft Power in the Chinese Dream Era] Territorio, Vol. 76 (March 15, 2016): 131-140 https://doi.org/10.3280/TR2016-076018

ESSAYS:

2022 Santi, Ettore. “Redesigning the Rural. System Thinking and China’s Agrarian Modernization.” in PLATFORM

2022 Santi, Ettore and Chandra Laborde. “Queer Lands: Gendered Experiments in two Green Heterotopias.” Queer Ecologies, a special issue of you are here – a journal of creative geography, University of Arizona, Tucson (May 2022): 30-37

2020 Santi, Ettore. “Yet Another Land Revolution” in Luigi Tomba and Oliver Krischer (eds.) Shades of Green, Made in China Journal, 20–25, Sydney University Press.

BOOK CHAPTERS:

2022 Woodoworth, Max, Xuefei Ren, Jesse Rodenbiker, Ettore Santi, Yining Tan, Li Zhang, Yu Zhou, “Researching China during COVID-19 Pandemic,” in Stanley Brunn (ed.), COVID-19 and an Emerging World of Ad Hoc Geographies, Springer (In Press)

SPECIAL ISSUES AND EDITED VOLUMES:

2022 Santi, Ettore and Xuan Chen, eds. “The City and the Environmental Humanities,” a special issue of Urban Planning International (In Press)

2015 Cenzatti, Marco, and Ettore Santi, eds. Acupuncturing Changlong Village. Global Urban Humanities. Berkeley, CA. 2015.

IN PROGRESS:

Santi, E. “Designing Food Security: The Invention of a Super-Rice Farm in China” (R&R at Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians)